Building Better Breads

Since all breads must contain somewhat established proportions of the same basic ingredients — flour, fat, leavening, sugar and water — to be characterized as such, bakers are challenged when they want to add new ingredients for functional and nutritional improvements. Even the slightest variation in ingredient quantity or manufacturing procedure can equate to measurable differences in the final baked item.

To prevent discrepancies, most ingredients are weighed, rather than measured by volume. This eliminates potential inconsistencies with measuring dry ingredients, such as flour, due to individual bakers’ variations with sifting and packing procedures. The exception to this is with liquids, which are typically quantified as a volume-of-liquid to weight-of-flour ratio (i.e., 1 pint/lb.).

While exact, consistent ingredient measurement is the first step to building consistent, quality bread, a close second is the knowledge that, once a formula is defined, bakers must use the exact ingredients and the precise amount specified every time. Even the slightest variation in ingredients can produce noticeable changes in the finished bread. For example, because gluten proteins must absorb liquid before they can be developed, water addition is important. Varying the water volume even slightly can have a detrimental effect on bread quality.

Pick a bag of flour
When it comes to selecting flour for breadmaking, all flours are not created equal. Refined flour, such as regular wheat (all-purpose) flour, contains only the endosperm portion of the grain kernel. Whole-grain flour, on the other hand, includes the grain’s germ and bran, which contain most of the fiber, oil and B vitamins of the kernel. Thus, whole-grain flour has a more nutritious positioning compared to refined flour. However, practical reasons exist for refining wheat. For one, the bran and germ dilute wheat flour’s breadmaking qualities — the ability to be leavened by yeast. Also, large lipid concentrations in wheat’s germ and bran layers make flour more susceptible to oxidation, thus shortening shelf life.

Yeast can leaven wheat-flour dough because wheat endosperm contains the important storage proteins gliadin and glutenin. When these proteins are kneaded with water, they form gluten, a plastic and elastic protein complex that gives bread structure. As dough is kneaded, the gluten forms long, elastic strands. These strands capture the gases produced by the leavening agent in tiny pockets or cells, causing dough to rise. This occurs because gluten stretches under pressure at the same time it resists pressure.

In yeast breads, gluten expands to accommodate gas produced by yeast, containing gases rather than stretching to the point of bursting. If dough were wholly plastic, gas would migrate to the surface and escape; if only elastic, gas would accumulate in a few pressurized pockets and bread would be heavy and coarse. Baking dough coagulates the gluten, giving bread its structure and strength.

Rye is a grain with proteins capable of forming gluten, but compared to wheat gluten, rye gluten is inferior and weak. Barley also contains some gluten. Because the proteins in other grains cannot form sufficient gluten, bakers must combine other grains with wheat flour when making yeast-leavened bread. Otherwise, the end product will be extremely heavy and dense.

Flour’s gluten content is very important to bread bakers. Ingredient quantities and the manufacturing process are determined, in part, by how they affect gluten development, which in turn influences the bread’s structure. Up to a point, the more dough is kneaded, the more the gluten develops. However, it is possible to overdevelop dough. This occurs when dough is kneaded too long and the protein is overstretched. The dough turns into a thick fluid with no elasticity. The goal is to develop highly elastic dough, which means maximum gas retention, loaf volume and fineness of texture, without passing the invisible boundary of overdevelopment. While overworking dough by hand is difficult, it is quite easy in a commercial manufacturing operation. Timing the kneading process ensures consistency in finished baked bread.