I am no expert when it comes to Bread. Hence, I am in no position to explain in details except to share with you the little information that I know. Basically, bread is a plain dough that is made special by yeast action. Yeast fermentation to be exact is the reaction of yeast to sugar / starch which produces carbon dioxide (that created the air pockets you see in bread) and alcohol (which I presumed it evaporates during baking).
To start, I shall introduce you to the 3 types of yeast dough.
1. Lean dough: low in fat and sugar
2. Rich dough: contains higher fat content (such as butter and eggs)
3. Laminated dough: consist layers of fat sandwiched between yeast dough
Generally, there are 12 basic steps of working with yeast dough.
1. Scaling of ingredients
2. Mixing
3. Bulk fermentation / proofing
4. Punching / knocking down
5. Scaling / portioning of dough
6. Rounding
7. Bench resting
8. Shaping
9. Final proofing
10. Baking
11. Cooling
12. Storage
I am sure you know that one important thing about bread you have to know is that it contains YEAST! Yeast makes the bread ALIVE. You need to feed it with sugar for the yeast to stay alive, optimum temperature for it to grow, etc. When I said feeding it with sugar, I mean sugar of any form. Such as flour which contains carbohydrates, honey, fructose, etc. You need to add the right amount of the ingredients to ensure that the bread grows at its optimum.
Scaling is one important process. Do not take it lightly. Salt though only a tiny bit is added usually, it plays a very important role. Taken from the Professional Baking 5th Edition by Wayne Gisslen, salt strengthens gluten structure (you can see how gluten is form from here) which makes it more elastic. Gluten holds more water and carbon dioxide allowing the dough to expand more while holding its structure. Though salt strengthens gluten, it inhibits yeast growth. Thus, the quantity of salt to be added must be controlled carefully. If too much salt is used, fermentation and proofing will be slow or the yeast might be killed from 'salt overdose' =x If too little salt is used, the yeast feeds on too much sugar, you will have an over fermented dough (overproofed aka too much volume).
All right. I realized if i were to continue on the remaining 11 steps, I will be writing a thick book on bread collating information from all over (books and internet). Hence, to spare myself as well as yourself, I shall skip that. Seriously, after reading this book (Professional Baking 5th Edition by Wayne Gisslen) you will get the gist. Yup just the gist because there is really a lot more to understand. But at least you get the basic understanding.
Moving on, other than these 12 steps, there are a few types of dough-making processes which includes:
1. Straight dough method: Combine all ingredients
2. Modified straight dough method: This is mainly for rich dough where fats, sugar, eggs and flavoring are uniformly blended before the dough is developed.
3. Sponge method: A starter dough is produced where you have to keep it alive by feeding it with flour and water. It will grow as you feed. Bread that contains such starter will be much more flavorful and this is hour sourdough bread started off as well.
By the way, most of the information I share in this post comes from this book which I had mentioned for the third time for now. I can't possibly paraphrase or summarize everything (there are about 3 chapters on bread in this book - did i mention it the 4th time?). Also, it won't be fair to the author. :)
Well, I have written the basic of the basic about bread alone. Mainly would be the 12 steps to take note - I think it is one of the questions on my LCB theory exam =x
The challenging part of bread making would be using the sponge method. I hope to try it one day and I was told that you can keep it for like forever as long as you feed it constantly to keep it ALIVE! Quoting from the book by Joanne Chang: 'Bread is filled with yeast spores that eat and sleep and burp and hiccup and grow and die.' What a cute description I thought :)
xx,
TBG
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