Bread deep dive: The anatomy of bread and bread making

Hello fork musketeers!

This is part 1 of the Bread deep dive I promised earlier. If you want to skip around, here's the table of contents:

1. Basic anatomy of bread and bread making
2. Fermentation/Proofing
3. Fat vs. fat-free doughs
4. Designs on breads

So without further ado...

What's in bread?

Bread is everywhere. It's the first thing that welcomes you to a nice restaurant after you've been seated; it's the vehicle to the pate you've been thinking about all day or it could just be a really good sandwich with the right bread.

As I mentioned before, bread making is more of an art than a science. This is because you're working with so few ingredients: flour; water; yeast and sometimes salt. While this makes it look easy, it's actually easier to mess it up because it's so simple. You know, the thing that's easy to learn but hard to master.

Bread is basically gluten. Gluten is a protein that is made up of two components: gliadins and glutelins. These proteins are mainly found in grains such as wheat, rye and barley and gives structure to the bread as well as elasticity. Gluten is literally the protein that gives the bread structure.

You can develop gluten in a few ways. The standard way is to knead it. There are lots of ways to knead and you can definitively find one method that you like the most. I prefer to grab the front "edge"; fold it back on itself; rotate 90˚; push forward with the heel of my palm. By kneading the dough you're developing the gluten thus making the structure of your bread more sound. If you have a wetter dough, like ciabatta, you can do the stretch and fold method. I haven't tried it myself but it looks promising.

Now the next ingredient is yeast. Yeast is a bacteria that naturally occurs in nature, including flour and fermentation. If you were trying to make a sourdough starter, you're trying to cultivate "wild yeast" or the yeast naturally found in flour. Commercial yeast is a specific strain of yeast that is particularly effective at fermenting your bread as well as making it rise. If you look closely at breads, you'll see a variety of bubbles within the bread structure.

These bubbles are caused by yeast releasing alcohol and gases. Yeast is used to leaven, or rise, breads because it also adds flavour to the bread. This combination of flavour and ability to rise the bread is something you can't get with baking powder or baking soda alone. Before you get wigged out by bacteria in your bread, you can rest assured that yeast and any other bacteria dies off while it's being baked. Actually, as the internal temperature of your bread rises, the yeast becomes more active and releases more gas until it finally dies off. This is why your bread also rises in the oven.

In a weird, philosophical way, by making bread you are playing with life. You're handling, observing and taking special care of something that is alive and needs your attention to be the best it can be. Kind of like a baby, minus the ear-piercing shrills adorable cuteness. The dough is usually pretty darn soft though. #HolyShitPlushGauge™

Bread making tips

So if you found a baker's bread recipe, you might have read something like this:

1. Flour 100%
2. Water 70%
3. Yeast 1.5%
4. Salt 1.5%

The first thing you're thinking is probably: what on earth did I just read? Percentages are about adding up to 100%! This adds up to 173%! What gives, man? Is this some secret bread making language I have to decode before I can make cool breads? Darn it!

Well, the reality is fortunately more simple. It's a slight quirk in bread recipes that allows you to easily scale your recipe. So let's say you wanted to use 500g of flour, well it's going to look like this:

1. Flour: 500g (100%)
2. Water: 350g (70% of 500)
3. Salt: 7.5g (1.5% of 500)
4. Yeast: 7.5g (1.5% of 500)

If you've checked out some bread videos, some people would suggest to reserve some flour to adjust the consistency of your dough. This is actually not a great idea since your recipe is based on the amount of flour you've used. So, as a rule of thumb, you should be reserving the liquid portion of your recipe (water and/or milk). As much as we'd like to think all the all-purpose flours at IGA are the same, in reality they aren't. Some flours are drier than others or act differently. Of course don't beat yourself up if you tossed in all your water and your dough is too wet. At that point there's not much you can do aside from putting in more flour.

Chef told me that when you're making artisanal breads, it's always better to be on the wet side (so 60/65% to 80%). When bread is made commercially, the dough tends to be on the drier side since it's hard to work with sticky dough. Generally speaking though, bread-making formula follows these steps:

1. Mix all ingredients except fats until just combined
2. Add fats (oil/butter) last and knead.
3. When the dough is ready, set aside in a bowl and let it proof until doubled in volume.
4. Punch down risen dough and shape.
5. Proof again until doubled in volume.
6. Bake/cook/fry/whatever.

If you have a fancier recipe, the steps will look like this:

1. Make a pre-ferment a day ahead.
2. Mix all ingredients (plus pre-ferment) except fats until just combined
3. Add fats (oil/butter) last and knead.
4. When the dough is ready, set aside in a bowl and let it proof until doubled in volume.
5. Punch down risen dough and shape. If you want some cool stuff in the middle, now's the time to add it.
6. Proof again until doubled in volume.
7. Cut a pattern on the top.
8. Bake/cook/fry/whatever.

If you can grasp this formula, you now know the method for 99% bread recipes. It's only a matter of the amounts and ingredients to make it. I know it sounds really easy to do but the complicated part comes from actually handling the thing that's alive: your dough. Depending on the temperature, a recipe that says "3 hours to rise" may actually take 5; you can also add less yeast since it'll be warmer; if your work place is humid, you can hold back on the water, etc etc etc.

I'm sure you can see why making bread is more of an art than a science. The most important thing is to know how your flour acts and to take your work environment into consideration. It sounds really wishy-washy but as you work with dough, you'll learn how to handle it and what to expect.