part ingredients AND techniques 1COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL IT’s rEALLY QUITE SIMPLE TO MAKE A LOAF OF bREAD: Take some flour, a measure of water, a bit of salt and yeast. Mix for a while, knead for a while, ferment for a while, then shape, proof, and finally bake for a while. Not much to it, really. It’s a little more intricate if we want to make a dozen loaves, but still pretty straightforward. Making fifty loaves, or a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand or more—now, even though the principles are the same, the stakes are higher, the repercussions from a failed batch are more resounding. But if we acquire the skill to make a dozen or a hundred or a thou- sand loaves, the next level of proficiency is to be able to make themconsistently. And that, for both the professional and the home baker, is probably the greatest challenge: to be able, day after day, to adjust to the specific needs of the day’s doughs, to factor in and accommodate the slight changes in ambient temperature and humidity, as well as the degree of ripeness of the poolish or biga or sourdough and the tolerance of the dough during fermentation, and to be constantly mindful of the interrelationship among all the steps in production and what small changes might be required on any given day in order to attain consistency. In short, to be successful, the baker must be able to think like a yeast spore, and sense things like lactobacilli. If consistency is the goal, then a foremost principle of baking is that whatever we do to a loaf of bread, at any point in its production, will affect the bread throughout the rest of its trajectory from raw ingredients to baked bread; each step of the bread-making process is intricately and ineluctably connected to each subsequent step. 2 BREAD: A BAKER’s bOOK OF TECHNIQUES AND RECIPES I like to think that a loaf of bread in one’s hands is the result of a thousand factors that went into its making. In a sense, the bread always seems to be one micro step ahead of us, and our daily endeavor is to come to terms with as many of the subtleties as we can. Those who wish to conquer bread making, then, are sooner or later sure to be disillusioned. In fact, just befriending the bread is reward enough, and a much worthier aspiration. Once the grains have been sown and grown, tended and harvested, milled and bagged, the baker has the opportunity to do his or her work. I used to marvel at my ability to make acceptable loaves one day, while the next day I would make bread that I wanted to hide. How could there be such a variation of results? Since I was not the beneficiary of a standardized apprenticeship program, my early baking years were characterized much more by empirical, practical, and intuitive experience rather than formal academic and technical training. I would never wish to forego the learning and lessons I garnered from those early years; nothing of equal value can substitute for years of in-depth, hands-on focus at the bench. As my academic understanding increased, however, so did the consistency of my baking endeavors. Reading books about baking will never be a substitute for time spent with your hands immersed in the dough, yet the quality of the baker’s work can be immensely improved if he or she has an understanding of what takes place from the time a bag of flour is opened until fragrant fin- ished loaves are pulled from the oven. ingredients and techniques 3 From the womb of the Earth to the mill— and beyond—the seed that makes bread is a living creature. —H. E. Jacob, from Six Thousand Years of Bread The Bread-Making Process from Mixing through Baking CHAPTER 1 IN THE DISCUSSION THAT FOLLOWS, we will look at each phase of the bread-making process, from the scaling of ingredients through the cooling of the baked loaves. Each step of the way we will examine not only the importance of the individual step, but also try to see how each step affects the ensuing steps. Volumes could be written on many of these individual steps, but for our present purposes, we will endeavor to present a clear overview and confine the discussion to those aspects of bread production that have a direct impact on the daily life of the baker. Some of the information pre- sented will be scientific; I am, however, a baker and not a scientist, and the goal is to undertake explanations that are useful and applicable to the daily reality of the baker. 5 The bread-making process can be divided into dough temperature (described fully beginning on twelve separate steps. Occasionally, one of the steps, page 446). Consistent baking results require many such as folding, might be eliminated. Some steps, like things, not the least of which is consistent tem- bench resting or final fermentation, are fairly straight- perature control. The importance of spending a few forward; others, like mixing and baking, are enor- moments calculating water temperature in order to mously complex. Bear in mind from the outset that achieve mixed dough in a correct temperature zone whatever the baker does to his or her dough will have cannot be overstressed. Once we have the correct an impact on every step in the rest of the process. water temperature, the actual mixing can proceed. Life in the mixing bowl is complex indeed, and it begins the moment the flour and water come Step One: Scaling together and mixing ensues. Mixing accomplishes The first step in bread making is the scaling of ingre- a number of important goals. Most simply, it brings dients. Correct and accurate scaling is necessary about a uniform distribution of ingredients so they in order to achieve consistency and uniformity of are evenly dispersed throughout the dough. Other production. When scaling, we are also calculating the aspects of mixing are far more complex. During mix- final dough yield, and accuracy will prevent under- or ing, gluten is formed. At first, the gluten molecules overproduction. Therefore, cost control is a small but in flour are randomly bunched, haphazardly ori- significant aspect of scaling. Measuring ingredients by ented in all directions. During mixing, the molecules weight and not by volume is the only way to ensure are stretched and become aligned in more or less accuracy, and a reliable scale is an invaluable tool for straight lines, and it is this stretching and aligning every baker. of the gluten strands that develops the dough’s strength. Mixing the dough so that the gluten is adequately developed enables the dough to stretch Step Two: Mixing well, to resist ripping, and to hold trapped carbon The first step in proper mixing has nothing to do dioxide gases that are produced during yeast fermen- with actual mixing at all: It involves the simple deter- tation, which in turn enables bread to emerge from mination of the water temperature required for the the oven with good volume and lightness. It’s a bit mix, which is calculated by computing the desired more complicated than that, however. There are, in At Gram’s House MY EARLIEST FOOD mEmORIES mAY BE OF BREAD. One of my grandmothers was Polish or Russian, depending on where the ever-changing boundary line happened to be drawn at a given time. As a boy, I visited or was visited by my grandparents most every weekend. If we went to Gram’s house, there was sure to be a boundless array of home-cooked foods, which fit effortlessly into my seemingly bottomless belly. If my grandparents visited us, there was less food, but food was still the hub of the visit. No matter where the visit took place, Gram always had bread. The funny thing was, I never saw an entire loaf. In those days, people still bought bread by the pound. Gram would order a few pounds, which were then dutifully hacked off some endless loaf and wrapped in paper. The bread was crusty, dense, and fragrant. At times, we would get the end portion of this mother lode of loaves, which had a paper union stamp. We’d rip the stamp off, but usually some paper remained on the loaf. We didn’t care; we ate and ate. 6 BREAD: A BAKER’s bOOK OF TECHNIQUES AND RECIPES fact, two proteins in wheat flour that combine to actual hands-on aspect of mixing and the visual and form gluten—glutenin and gliadin—and they have tactile changes that occur. Once we put the dough seemingly opposite natures. (Rye flour contains the ingredients into the mixer and turn it on, we begin proteins gliadin and glutelin, but due to the presence to hydrate the flour. It is important, regardless of of pentosans the mixing requirements as well as the what style of mixer is used, that the initial process of dough properties for rye breads are very different mixing takes place on first speed. During this period than those for wheat bread. The method for mixing of the mix, the outer surface of the starch granules rye breads is discussed in detail beginning on page become moistened, the ingredients take on cohesion, 204). Glutenin helps develop dough structure and and the dough begins to form. Once the ingredients the elastic quality of the dough, that is, the dough’s are incorporated, generally from 2 to 3 minutes after resistance to stretching.