Science of Bread: Bread Science 101 From Chinese baozi to Armenian lavash, bread comes in thousands of forms. What do they have in common? On the most basic level, they all involve cooking a mixture of milled grains and water. Imagine a continuum of breads, ranging from the thinnest flatbreads to the fluffiest brioche. Some are amazingly simple: Matzoh, for example, is nothing more than flour and water, baked until crisp. Raised breads, on the other hand, involve the complex interactions between flour and the leaveners that give them their porous, tender quality. Leaveners come in two main forms: baking powder or soda and yeast. Baking powder or baking soda work quickly, relying on chemical reactions between acidic and alkaline compounds to produce the carbon dioxide necessary to inflate dough or batter (more on this later). Yeast, on the other hand, is a live, single-celled fungus. But leavening agents would just be bubbling brews without something to contain them. For more about bread science, check out these links!
How to Make a Sourdough Starter: Day One — Pinch My Salt Today we begin the great sourdough starter experiment. The goal of this experiment is to catch some wild yeast and try to keep them happy so that they will multiply. By harnessing the power of wild yeast in a sourdough starter, we’ll eventually be able to bake bread without using any commercial yeast at all. That’s what traditional sourdough is – a bread leavened by wild yeast. The process can be very technical and scientific, but I’m not going to delve into all those boring details right now. Instead, we’re just going to jump in and get started and I’ll explain things as we go. There are several different ways to create a sourdough starter and I don’t know that any one method is truly better than the others. Here’s how I started: I mixed one cup of whole wheat flour with 3/4 cup of room-temperature pineapple juice in a bowl until everything was well blended. Want to create your own sourdough starter? Here are the instructions (click on the links for photos): Day Seven: Same as above.
Baking Glossary Bakers throw around a lot of terms and often don't define them. As I use jargon I'll try to start recording it here for the sake of building up a reference. ABAA: Artisan Baking Across America, by Maggie Glezer. A book featuring profiles of artisan bakers and recipes for some of their breads. autolyse: a technique for improving gluten development without heavy kneading. Baker’s percentage:a convention for listing the ingredients in a dough in which the quantity of each ingredient is expressed a percentage of the total amount of flour. BBA: The Bread Baker's Apprentice, a book by Peter Reinhart. Banneton: a woven basket, sometimes lined with linen, used to hold a shaped loaf while it is proofing. Batard: a loaf that has an oval or oblong shape. Biga: a term used variously as a very stiff (~50% hydration preferment), or as a generic term for preferment. Boule: a round loaf (French for "ball"). Brotform: a coiled cane basket used to hold a shaped loaf while it is proofing. KAF: King Arthur Four.
Measurements-Conversions Click below for measurements and conversions: All conversions in the charts below are approximate and most have been rounded up or down to the nearest whole number for easy measuring. Equivalent Measures U.S. Standard Measure and Metric Conversion The following chart is a guide for converting standard US measurements to metric measurements. Fahrenheit and Centigrade (Celsius) Conversion The following chart is a guide for converting from Fahrenheit to Centigrade. Convert Fahrenheit to Centigrade (Celsius) Subtract 32 from the Fahrenheit reading, multiply by 5, and then divide by 9 to find the Centigrade reading.For example: 160o F – 32 = 128; 128 × 5 = 640; 640 ÷ 9 = 71.11o C; round down to 70o C. for the >oven setting. Convert Centigrade (Celsius) to Fahrenheit Multiply the Centigrade reading by 9, divide by 5, and then add 32 to find the Fahrenheit reading.For example: 70o C × 9 = 630; 630 ÷ 5 = 126; 126 + 32 = 158o F; round up to 160o F for the >oven setting.
The Bread Bakers Guild of America Bread Making Videos — Bread Baking Instructional Videos and Baking Supplies.