With the post-move turmoil it will still be a little while before I have the time to get in the kitchen and bake. So I thought it would be an excellent time to post a breaducation entry, and I have had one up my sleeve for just such an occasion. While you may have gleaned the general shape of my baking process from my posts I thought it would be beneficial if I took a post to outline the whole process.
For each step, I will do my best to explain in a general sense the what, how, and why. Later installments will break down the list into chunks and combine pictures and videos to help illuminate some of the concepts which are better seen than read.
Step .5 - Preferments
Unless you are making a straight dough you'll be using some form of preferment. You'll see different names for this depending on who wrote the recipe, but whether they refer to it as a sponge, starter, mother, levain, biga, poolish, or pate fermantee, it boils down to the same thing: a prefermented portion of your final dough. This step usually takes place 14-16 hours before the bake (hence the .5), and serves to create a longer lasting more flavorful bread, by allowing allowing the yeast and enzymes free reign for a while.
Here is a picture of the ingredients for a pate fermantee scaled into my mix bowl. The goal with a preferment is NOT to develop the gluten but just to bring the ingredients to full incorporation, i.e.) you don't see anymore flour. You can use a silicone spatula or mixer for this step, which I do for wetter preferements like poolish, but I have found that my hands make shorter work of the process on stiffer preferments such as this one.
Here is what a pate fermentee looks like fully incorporated.
Step 1 - Scaling
The day of the bake has arrived, and before you can get crackin' its best if you have all of your ingredients measured and ready to go so as not to keep the dough waiting when the time comes. I think we all have the mental image of the grandmother making dough from a formula that exists only in her head, measuring ingredients, by sight and feel alone. That tactile sense for the accuracy of a dough is something which requires consistency to learn. The proverbial grandmother got that consistency by learning from someone more experienced (perhaps the proverbial grandmother's proverbial grandmother) feeling her mistakes and correcting them. For those of us learning on our own, the consistency required to develop a tactile sense comes from scaling your ingredients.
If you have watched any cooking shows, you probably know flour compacts and so volumetric measurements such as cups will hinder consistency. Get a digital scale and weigh all of your ingredients.
Also along the same lines, it is worth taking the temperature of the primary ingredients, particularly the flour, water, and room. Recognizing ahead of time that you are baking in an 90 degree oven pretending to be your kitchen, allows you to adjust the water temp to compensate.
Step 2 - Mixing
Once you've got all your ingredients scaled and temped it's time for the real fun to begin. What you put in the start of the mix will differ depending on what kind of bread you are making, but it will at least be two ingredients: water and flour. If you are making a dough without additions (such as a soaker of grains and seeds) which requires an autolyse that will be all you add.
This is a picture of the Roasted Potato Bread autolysing. Autolyse is a fancy term for letting the dough sit for 20-30 minutes after bringing the flour and water to incorporation, but before the addition of salt and yeast. It allows the flour to fully hydrate and gives the enzymes some time to work their magic. Ultimately, this means the dough requires less time actually being mixed lowering the chances of over-oxidizing the dough, thus preserving flavor.
Not all doughs require an autolyse, though in my experience it is almost always beneficial. It does however add time to the overall process, which is why in a professional setting the step is skipped if it doesn't make a marked contribution to the end product.
Once the autolyse has come to an end you can put the mixer on speed 1 and incorporate the salt and yeast, then add any preferment incrementally. With the ingredients are fully incorporated the actually mix time begins, and the focus shifts from evenly distributing ingredients and flour hydration to developing gluten.
My mixes break down into multiple sessions in the mixer (which rarely exceed 3 minutes each), interspersed with cutting the dough on the bench.
Both the kneading action of the hook and cleanly cutting the dough help to further the development of gluten. However, even when a dough is finished mixing it will not have achieved it's ultimate level of development.
Step 3 - Bulk Fermentation
The baking process I learned allows the dough two primary periods to rise, bulk fermentation is the first and longest.
I use lexan tubs which I spray down with cooking spray before adding the dough. I prefer square relatively straight sides, as it allows for easy folding of the dough, and allows you to easily judge the overall volume change during the fermentation.
At intervals of 20 minutes or greater during the bulk fermentation the dough is folded as many times as is necessary to achieve the correct consistency.
Here I am in the act of folding the dough.
Folding the dough involves stretching out one side and folding it over (roughly 2/3s of way) onto itself. This is repeated on each side.
This action is one more step along the way in developing the gluten in the dough, and the results can be seen instantly, and even after one fold you'll see the dough increasingly pull away from the sides of the tub as it becomes more cohesive.
Step 5 - Dividing
The effort required to make five loaves of bread is almost identical to the effort required to make one, so you may as well make some to freeze or share. Up until this point it's been one dough (hence the term bulk in "bulk fermentation"). But with the transformation from amorphous blob to loaves drawing nigh we will need to divide the dough into the number of loaves desired.
The first thing you'll need to do is flour the board where you intend to do your cutting. The lower the hydration of a dough (and the better it's gluten development) the less flour you'll have to use.
Invert your tub over the floured area, add some extra flour around the perimeter, then scrape that flour under the dough with a bench knife.
Gently spread the dough out just to the point where it's an even thickness. With home mixes you should be able to eyeball the number of loaves relative to the amount of dough.
Even still, it's beneficial to weigh the dough, as air pockets, and additions can make the volume deceptive.
If you are making ciabatta or another unshaped rustic loaf, be more conscientious when you spread out and divide the dough, as that is all the shaping the dough gets.
Regardless it's not the end of the world if you need to trim from one piece and add to another. Just be sure to dust excess flour off of any trimming before adding it to the new piece.
Step 6 - Pre-Shaping
We've been talking a lot about gluten development, and the shaping of the loaves represents the final step in that process. The more rustic the loaf, the less shaping will be required: Ciabatta - no shaping, Rustic boules - 1 shaping, Batard - 2 shapings. Attempting to jump straight to the final shape will present you with one of two end results: 1) the dough becomes too tense during the shaping and tears as you try to elongate it; 2) the dough doesn't get enough tension worked into it and is flat bottomed and uneven along it's length. Pre-shaping allows you to avoid these pitfalls.
Regardless of the final shape the first shaping is the same, a boule. If the dough is very active, take a moment to de-gas the dough by slapping it with the flat of your hand.
That's right baking as stress relief.
I'll include a video for the actual shaping in the not too distant future, but suffice to say the de-gassed dough is then rounded into a boule shape. This process de-gases further and gives you an even shape for the final shaping.
Step 7 - Bench Rest
This is an easy one. You just put the pre-shaped loaves onto a lightly floured linen then cover with plastic so they don't dry out.
The purpose of the rest is to prevent the first of the pitfalls listed in the previous step. Through the shaping the gluten network gets stretched to its capacity. Allowing the dough to sit for 15-20 minutes gives it time to relax before it is given its ultimate shape.
More of my high-tech baking equipment. I always keep a few plastic grocery bags on hand for baking. You'll see them appear again in a couple steps.
Step 8 - Shaping
With the dough consistently shaped and relaxed, it's time for it to take its final shape.
Even if you are making a boule, it is worth the time to do a second shaping. Just as before you'll want to de-gas the dough (aka slap it silly) then round the loaf.
It's a bit hard to tell, but if you compare this picture to the earlier ones you can see the increased tension of the dough in the smoothness of the surface.
Once you have your desired shape you'll place it in floured proofing baskets, or on floured linens as in the previous step.
Step 9 - Final Fermentation aka Bench Proof
Yet another step which basically means wait for a while. Cover the baskets well so as not to dry out the loaves. In a well run bakery all of the pauses you've seen in this process are filled with earlier (or later) steps for other doughs. In the time between the dividing/pre-shape of a sourdough mix, you could cut/pre-shape a batch of rye.
THE RETURN OF THE PLASTIC BAGS!
If you've read my trials and tribulations with the roasted potato bread, you know that the duration of the bench proof is a fickle mistress. It varies due to dough temp, room temp, type of dough, type of yeast . . . etc. So it is best to not assume what is written in a recipe is set in stone, and use your experience and senses to tell you when a dough is ready for the oven. A proofed dough will be slightly slower to bounce back from your touch and you won't feel a core of denser dough just beneath the surface.
Step 10 - Scoring
Scoring/slashing the dough serves to create a weak point from which the dough can expand in the oven. Without adequate scoring a dough will be overly dense, or may just find its own structural weakness to exploit. Unless you are making a Fendu style loaf in which the weakness is the result of shaping, scoring happens just before the dough goes in the oven. Scoring is also aesthetically appealing and in a bakery can serve to differentiate one variety of bread from another, or the work of multiple bakers. Use of a curved or straight razor blade, known as a lame, is a common method of scoring dough, but it is not the only way. Here are some pics of various scoring techniques.
Curved Lame. 3 slashes.
Scissor cut boule.
Fendu loaf.
Step 11 - Baking
It's finally time to turn the dough into bread. About 30-45 minutes before loading the bread in the oven you'll want to set the oven to pre-heat. The more mass in your oven the longer you'll want that pre-heat window to be. The more mass the better, as it helps even out the temperature fluctuations which are part of a home ovens cycling. Mass in this case comes from things like pizza stones or a cast iron pan for making steam. I use 3 stones, two on the lower rack and one on the upper rack.
To load the bread into the oven you'll need a peel or flat cookie sheet to slide the bread onto the stone, and something to keep the bread from sticking to said peel. If you want to give your bread that traditional feel to the bottom crust use a fine ground corn meal or semolina flour. If you don't like the smell of burning cornmeal and get tired of cleaning off your oven and pizza stones then use parchment paper. I did the latter for a few years, and if I were in a bakery setting the cost of parchment would be prohibitive, but I'm not and this is one corner I wholly recommend cutting.
The last thing you'll need for a successful bake is steam. I have mentioned the benefits in several earlier posts, but it bears repeating. Steam at the onset of a bake gives your loaf better color and volume. I now use a hand held steamer and some copper tubing to inject my steam, but have tried every method from boiling water into a preheated cast-iron pan to spritzing the loaves directly with water. All help, though some are more effective than others.
Step 12 - Cooling
Another waiting step, and the hardest one of the lot. As soon as the loaf leaves the oven all I want to do is stuff it in my face, but your patience will be rewarded if you wait until it is cooled.
Hot from the oven, is a phrase often used synonymously with fresh good bread. However a quality bread only reaches its full potential for aroma and flavor after it has cooled completely. In the case of rye breads with a high percentage of rye flour they don't achieve their potential for a full day or more.
I know it seems counter intuitive, but I have definitely found it to be true. Try it as an experiment the next time you bake multiple loaves, cut one immediately and let the other rest for a couple of hours.
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The only step remaining is to eat the bread, and after the amount of effort you put into making it, it will taste all the better. Thanks for bearing with a VERY long post! I hope you found it informative, and that it helps you keep your bearings as you read through the more sparsely explained Bread Log posts. Baking shall resume soon!
Vino
