FAQ for alt.bread.recipes

Additions

Editor's note: I'm just collecting snippets from Roy Basan here and cleaning up the language. These aren't in any order yet.

Ascorbic acid or vitamin C is an effective bread improver that confers baking tolerance by improving dough stablily and bread volume. It acts through what is called an oxidation reduction process. Vitamin C is a reducing agent in high-speed mixing (if done under vacuum) but an oxidizing agent if used in a normal mixer at normal atmospheric pressure.

Vitamin C as used by many craft and home bakers works this way: It is first reduced to dehydroscorbic acid by an enzyme present in the flour. Dehydroscorbic acid has an oxidizing effect on the flour protein and improves it by increasing the number of disulfide bonds within the tertiary structure of the gluten, resulting in dough strengthening.