FAQ for alt.bread.recipes

Ingredients

This section briefly describes the functions that the different components of bread perform. See the Ingredients in depth for more detailed information.

Flour

Flour is the single most important ingredient in bread. It gives the bread its structure and the choice of flour or flours affects the texture of the bread. Most breads are made entirely or largely with wheat flour—including various grades of white flour and whole wheat flour. Some breads include a mixture of flours from two or more grains and others may not include any wheat at all.

Water

Water is the second most important ingredient in bread. When water is mixed with flour, a chemical change takes place that forms gluten, the protein structure that forms the walls of the little bubbles you see when you look at a slice of bread. By using water of the correct temperature, you control the temperature of the dough, thus controlling the speed of fermentation.

Salt

Salt controls the activity of yeast. It also tightens the gluten structure in the dough, and it adds flavor.

Yeast

Yeast is the most common leavening agent in bread, although not the only choice. Yeast is a one-celled organism that digests the starch in the dough and produces carbon dioxide gas, which gets trapped in the gluten matrix and expands the bubbles.

Fats

Adding fats and oils to dough makes the crumb more tender and the crust softer. Both fats and oils improve the keeping qualities of bread, but solid fats do a better job of that.

Sugars

Sugars add sweetness to bread and help the crust darken in the oven. Sugars, especially honey, also improve the keeping quality of bread. Sweeteners like honey, molasses, malt, and maple sugar also add their characteristic flavors.

Milk

Milk supplements the nutritional value of bread with additional protein, it softens crust and crumb, and it helps darken the crust in the oven.

Add-ins

Breads often contain a variety of other foods, everything from seeds and nuts to raisins and cinnamon to spinach and pepperoni to cheese and dill to small plastic dolls (New Orleans King Cake is technically a bread). Okay, the plastic doll isn't food, so don't eat it. When you find a basic bread dough that works for you, it is generally possible to use your own dough, so long as it is of the right general type, and incorporate other people's suggestions for add-ins, rather than follow the details of their bread recipe.

Additives and improvers

Under most circumstances the home baker should just say No to suggestions for dough improvers and additives. There are some kinds of bread in which a small amount of vital wheat gluten (gluten flour) is used as a matter of course. And there are particular locations where, because of the quality of the water, certain trace additives are helpful. Otherwise, it is usually better to spend time mastering technique than to spend money on chemicals.

You can make better bread at home, with no additives, than a commercial bakery can make with them. The reason commercial bakeries have to use additives in the first place is to mitigate the compromises inherent in using large commercial equipment to make bread. If you think of additives as a sign of the inability of the commercial bakery to turn out good bread without them, then you can take pride in your ability to do just that.