In this episode of the Stella Culinary School Podcast we kick off our bread baking lecture series with a lesson on the four ingredients needed to make bread. We discuss the science behind flour, water, yeast and salt and how it will affect your overall bread dough recipe.
In this episode:
- The baker's percentage and why it's important.
- Gluten and what role it plays in producing a great loaf of bread.
- The difference between cake, active dry and instant dry yeast.
- Salt's effect on gluten networks and yeast.
- The role acidic, alkaline and hard waters play in dough development.
- The different types of flour used for bread baking.
Books mentioned in the culinary quick tip:
- Crust and Crumb by Peter Reinhart
- The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart
- Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson
- The Bread Builder's: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott
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There are 20 Comments
Great first episode in the
Great first episode in the Bread Series. Lot's of new info that is not in the FCS series. Can't wait for the next episode in the series about Lean Doughs and Baguettes.
Elliot
Hey Eliot, Glad you enjoyed
Hey Eliot,
Glad you enjoyed the first episode. This will be an important foundation for our more advanced lectures that will be coming up soon.
@ Sharksfan7, Great
@ Sharksfan7,
Great suggestion, I'll add a link right now.
@ Sharksfan7 You can always
@ Sharksfan7
You can always download from iTunes.
@ StrickingTwice, I'm glad
@ StrickingTwice,
I'm glad you enjoyed the first podcast in the bread series. Even though a lot of the stuff we covered is common knowledge, especially if you've been hanging around on the forums for awhile, I was still important to set that foundation so we could expand BIG TIME coming up in the near future.
Hope you ate lots of great food in Italy.
I add a mixture of 85% bread
I add a mixture of 85% bread dough and 15% whole wheat flour to my starter when feeding. Works for me. I had to experiement with the amount of hydration and baking temp to make tradeoffs in the spring, crust and crumb. A lot of trial and error. Mostly error. In the end, it all depends on your personal preference. I also learned that one of the best parts of my sourdough is the high fat content European butter I use as a spread 
Elliot
@ GreenBake, I find that
@ GreenBake,
I find that anything above 25% whole wheat flour will start to create a dense texture. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done, but I've found that's the point where the whole wheat flour will start to degass the loaf and form a denser crumb.
Great first episode in the
Great first episode in the bread series. I'm looking forward to the rest. After 6 weeks, I'm finally caught up! Woo Hoo! 
Hey, glad you liked the first
Hey, glad you liked the first episode. After building out a lot of the videos that I wanted to get done, I'm now focusing on finishing the bread lecture series along with the technique videos.
Also, thanks for the two quiz questions you submitted for this episode. Fifty Stella Stars each, and I will be incorporating them into the upcoming quiz.
Awesome, glad to help.
Awesome, glad to help. Thanks Chef.
@chefJacob Because of your
@chefJacob
Because of your podcasts (both FCS and SCS), I have become extremely curious about bread and baking. Thank you so much for opening up that world. I am on a quest to make the perfect hamburger bun. SO if anyone has any suggestions... I'm all ears!
Yeast
Compressed, Active and Instant. If a formula outlines compressed yeast, and I want to use active, or instant, does the percentage stay the same?
For instance, if a recipe calls for .83% instant yeast (baker's percentage), will that be equal if I used compressed yeast or active?
Looking at a Danish pastry recipe, it calls for 55g of compressed yeast to 645g bread flour (8.8% BP). How much active yeast will I require? (won't it taste and smell very yeasty?).
Thanks,
Marc
Hi Marc, good question. There
Hi Marc, good question. There is a slight difference in the yeast that you use. Usually with enriched dough (like hamburger buns or brioche) I like to use cake or "compressed" yeast because it gives that nice "yeasty" flavor. You can convert yeast though with the following formula:
100% Cake Yeast = 40% - 50% Active Dry Yeast = 33% Instant Yeast.
Hope this helps, and I do plan on doing a burger bun video in the future.
Jacob
Fat content is on the high
Fat content is on the high side, which is normal for brioche, but it will also make the dough harder to work with. When you have this much fat in your dough, it's usually best to let it bulk ferment in the fridge overnight. The delayed fermentation will create better flavor, but it will also make the dough much easier to form (brioche dough gets really hard to handle at room temp).
All your other ratios look spot on. For the fat, I would recommend using whole butter, 1-2 eggs for structure, whole milk for your water.
You might want to set your butter weight at 500 grams initially, and then add more by sight. Super high fat brioche breads can be a bit finicky for the uninitiated, so you may want to work your way up to it.
Yes, less yeast and a longer
Yes, less yeast and a longer rise will give you a better end product.
And you're right, I absolutely need to do a brioche video.
It depends on the texture
It depends on the texture you're trying to achieve.
- If you mix the fat with the flour before adding water, the fat will coat the gluten strands, keeping a lot of the gluten from forming. This will give you a more cake like texture.
- If you mix the fat in with the flour and water at the same time (most common approach), this will still give you a rich, cake texture, but with a little more gluten structure.
- If you allow the flour to autolyse with the water first, and then add the butter, you're giving the gluten structure time to form. This approach is most common when making sliceable brioche bread.
For a good starting point, I would mix all the ingredients together at once, with the butter melted. If you want a more structured bun, then next time, you can do an autolyse step first.
Melting the butter will incorporate it more thoroughly into the flour, yielding less gluten development. If you want more gluten, then mix the butter in at room temperature.
If the butter stays cool throughout the entire mixing and proofing process and is still in chunks when you bake, then the butter will cause the formation of layers as it melts and it's water content turns to steam. This is how you get croissants and biscuits.