Bread, so far

In the short time I've been turning my hand to baking bread, I've realised not just how very little I know, but how even less I knew before this process began. There's absolutely more to bread than meets the eye... :-)

However, I've started to notice a logic to much of it and also begun to appreciate the 'why' of the individual parts making up the techniques, even though I remain firmly planted in the kindergarten of bread-making school. Thought I might try anyhow and share a couple of things that I've learned so far, which seem to tally with experience gained over the past months:-

* If you're not using a sourdough starter, use a 'sponge' or pre-ferment to enhance the flavour of the final dough.
* Free-form loaves need decent surface tension to retain their shape when baking.
* Rye flour is usually limited to 40% or less of overall flour content (with strong white making up the rest) since it does not have sufficiently strong gluten to hold together like strong white.
* Flour takes time to absorb the water when you initially add it, so adopt a 'staged' kneading technique.
* Kneading and stretching help develop the strong gluten bonds in the dough.
* Sourdough dough is slower than commercial baker's yeast and takes longer to develop.
* Slashing the dough nicely to acquire a satisfactory 'gringe' during baking is hard!
* A baking stone is worth its weight in granite/limestone/marble.
* Get a disposable silverfoil turkey roasting tray to act as a cover over the bread for the first 20 minutes of baking - it will trap the steam escaping from the dough and help delay the hardening of the crust, thus allowing the bread to 'spring' more as it heats up.


That's that I reckon. I still need to play around with delaying the addition of salt, using LESS commercial yeast to achieve a lighter bread, finding the best temperature for each type of loaf, etc etc etc...