Bread- Information for grown ups

Safety Advice

• This recipe contains wheat, one of the 14 most common allergens. Make sure to take dietary requirements into account when cooking.
• Take care when using an oven as this will be hot.

Tips, Tricks, and the science behind bread

• Flour: Any flour with a high gluten content will make good bread; including bread flour, strong flour, and pasta flour.
• Water: Water temperature is very important when blooming yeast; yeast will activate in cold water however, it will take a long time. Too hot and it will kill the yeast. Aim for 27 – 32ºC or ‘blood temperature’.
• Yeast: Any type of baking yeast will work (fresh, dried, or instant). It may work but there is no point in using brewer’s yeast, champagne yeast, or wine yeast for baking. Dried yeast is more concentrated than fresh yeast. There is no such thing as using  too little yeast however, the less you use the longer it will take for the colony to reach the same size and for your bread to prove.  Too much yeast will encourage a faster rise, but remember the metabolism of yeast produces alcohol – so you may have a very fast rise and the scent of a brewery!
• Alcohol  Leavened – (i.e. with yeast) bread does create alcohol in the dough – this is the same phenomena world wide and bread made this way is considered Halal by muslims (most of the alcohol is driven off by baking)- see islamqa.info
• Sugar: Yeast can consume the glucose from sugar in respiration giving off carbon dioxide.  Sugar is more readily available for the yeast to ‘feed’ on, in the early stages of production.  It is not essential to a basic bread, as the yeast can also feed on the starch in flour.  Yeast utilities the glucose from the sugar in respiration giving off carbon dioxide.

• Gluten: Gluten is a protein found in wheat products formed when glutenin and gliadin, two proteins found in wheat come into contact with water. In the dough the gluten forms a ‘net like structure’ able to trap the CO2 released during fermentation, which causes the bread to rise. This network is formed when the bread is kneaded as smaller strands come together.
• Kneading: There are many different techniques for kneading bread. We recommend using the heel of your hand to push the dough away from you on a well floured surface. Don’t worry if the dough gets sticky while you are doing this, add a little more flour to the work surface and your hands and carry on.
• First proof: Make sure your dough is in a bowl large enough that it can double in size without spilling over. Lightly oil the container to make the dough easier to turn out following the proof and to stop the dough from drying out. Cover the bowl with either clingfilm or a clean tea-towel and leave in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size. During this time the yeast will ferment any sugar present, producing carbon dioxide and alcohol (ethanol) which will burn off during cooking. This adds flavour to the dough and improves its structure. Alternatively you can slow prove the bread overnight in the fridge.
• Second Proof: This proof is for texture maturity of the dough.
• Over proofing: When the dough has been proofed for too long it is known as overproofed, happening when all the air bubbles burst. You know this has happened if you poke our dough and it does not bounce back at all.
• Under proofing: If you poke the bread and it springs back quickly it is underproofed. Bread which is properly proofed should slowly bounce back.

• Enriched dough: Some bread such as Brioche and Challah contain extra ingredients such as eggs, milk, sugar, oil, and butter. The addition of these ingredients makes the bread softer and richer.
• Sourdough: Instead of yeast a sourdough starter – which contains yeast – is used to introduce yeast.  Starters are conventionally made with wild yeasts that have colonised a mixture of flour and water.  It is kept alive through feeding fresh floor into the ferment, it has a characteristically sour flavour which is caused by the presence of one or more varieties of lactic bacteria the also colonise the starter.