Synpaedia | Main / How To Bake Bread

By Sean

A work in progress... By no means an indication of expertise. More a collection of opinions shaped by experience. Enjoy!

Note: John disagrees with almost everything written here. He hasn't actually read most of it, but he's quite confident it's all wrong. John does admit that Sean makes, on occasion, better bread.

Basic Methods

		No matter what the recipe, if you’re making yeasted bread, there are some things that will
	probably have to happen.  There will be some kind of selection and measuring of ingredients.  
	Somehow these ingredients must be mixed together.  One or more rising periods will occur.  The 
	bread will be baked.  And, of course, eaten (provided its consistency falls somewhere between 
	brick and sludge-monster).
		These steps, to the best of my knowledge, are almost always present in some form.  
	Without getting overly philosophical, I will say that I find it quite amazing that doing what 
	amounts to the same few steps over and over again yields such a wide variety of delicious 
	breads.  The purpose of this section is to offer my take on the best way to carry out the basic 
	steps of the process, so that no matter what recipe you have in front of you, you’ll end up with 
	the best bread imaginable.

Step One: Measuring Ingredients

So what first? I’ll assume you know enough to have the
necessary ingredients picked out. (It’s also probable that some evil dictatorial kitchen manager
has selected the ingredients for you…) Well, now you have to measure them. There are a few
ways to do this, with varying results. I am a proponent of two main methods, but first I’ll discuss
one that I somewhat disagree with. I’ll call it the Volumetric Lemming Method.
In this method, one usually has a recipe with various volumes of ingredients to be added
to the bread. Often the recipe gets scaled so that enough bread can be made to feed hordes of
hungry Synners. So you have something like 40 cups of flour, 1 cup of honey, 15 cups of water,
etc. You dutifully measure out the volumes and combine them in the Hobart, knead the bread for
a while, and… Crap! The bread is way too dry. Or crap! The bread is way too wet. What do
you do at this point? You scrap the method, because measuring flour by volume is about as
accurate as measuring the speed of light with a ruler and stopwatch. Flour varies wildly in
density – this depends a lot on how you scooped it into the measuring cup. You might have even
dipped the cup straight into the bin, which means the flour would still be relatively hard-packed.
If you follow this method, you really have no idea how much flour you’re putting in. This can
be acceptable, as we’ll see shortly. What is unacceptable is thinking you put in a different
amount than you actually did. It can really make your bread suck. I know because I’ve done it.
The first method I would actually promote is to not measure anything, and go by feeling.
We’re all hippies here, we like feelings. But seriously, if you kind of know how the dough
should feel, you can just keep adding ingredients in approximately the right proportions until you
have something that feels ‘alright.’ Sounds like bullshit? Probably. Because you only know
that dough feels right if you’ve made dough that feels right before. The solution to this problem
is to bake lots of bread and pay close attention to how the consistency of the dough plays out in
the final product. If you’re the adventurous type, and relatively immune to complaints about
weird bread, by all means feel free to experiment. But, I would STRONGLY recommend that
you at least have some sense of what you’re going for before you start blatantly ignoring the
recipe that someone nicely compiled for you. If you still feel like going for it, well, here we go…

THE I’M OK, YOU’RE OK METHOD

I usually throw about a handful of yeast into a goodly amount of warm water, with
enough sugar to keep it happy. Meanwhile, toss about a gallon of water into the Hobart with
some flour, oil (if you want), and honey (or equivalent sweetener). The oil and honey should
come in about equal amounts, around a cup or so. After the yeast is bubbling away, throw it in
the Hobart and mix with the dough hook. Keep adding flour until it looks alright. Bake at
around 450 degrees until it’s done. See how it goes?

I’m sure some of you are thoroughly confused by now, and probably mad at me for
writing a bunch of nonsense. Here is the method for you, which yields excellent results.

THE REAL METHOD

Any self-respecting bread recipe will give ingredient quantities by mass. This is good for
you, because masses are relatively stable, and your bread will usually come out the way it was
intended. There is a scale in the kitchen, which measures in ounces. 28 grams is approximately
an ounce, on earth – many bread recipes give quantities in grams. If you’re measuring a liquid,
it’s probably okay to do it by volume. But flour is special and wonderful, so make sure to do it
by mass. Remember, the density changes like mad. Mass is your friend. Follow this method,
and at least you’ll have the correct quantities in your bread, which is a step in the right direction.

Step Two: Mixing the Ingredients

How hard can it be? Just put them all in a pot and stir it up. Well, sort of. That’s kind of
like sitting down to a gourmet meal, dumping it in a blender, and drinking it down. It all ends up
in the same place, right? There are a lot of things you can do to your ingredients before they are
all in the form called dough. The most basic is a pre-ferment. This is the essence of nuanced
deliciousness. If you taste two breads that are baked by exactly the same method, except one
was pre-fermented, you will undoubtedly notice that the pre-fermented one tastes much better.
It’s hard to describe what exactly tastes better about it. It just does.
A pre-ferment is nothing more than some of the ingredients mixed together and allowed
to sit for a long time. The exact quantities of ingredients present in the pre-ferment depend on
the recipe. For that matter, the type of pre-ferment used depends on the recipe as well. Here I
will talk about the sponge. A sponge has a liquid consistency, and involves flour, water, and
yeast. Note that there is no salt. We want the yeast to be uninhibited. You might put in some
sugar just so the yeast can really have a ball.
So you have this thing sitting around, for an hour, or maybe a day. It starts to get sour,
which you can smell. That sourness is the good taste in the bread. It’s that simple. A little
confounding, too, because it really does make the bread taste good. If you come across a recipe
without a sponge, and you want to make one, you can use 30-50 percent of the flour in the
recipe, along with an equal amount of water and about half the yeast called for in the recipe. If
you want, mix up the rest of the dry ingredients and scoop them on top of the sponge. As time
passes, the sponge will bubble up through the flour. This looks really cool. Also, people
walking by will ask you why you are crazy enough to leave a thing full of flour sitting around all
day, and you can explain to them the wonders of the sponge.
Once the sponge is spongified, you can mix all the ingredients together. If you want a
zen-like experience, you can do this by hand, although it will take a long time. You may also
want to reserve some flour for this purpose, so that your hands don’t become wads of dough.
Kneading dough is an excellent skill to have, but I won’t talk about it here, since Synergy usually
needs quantities of bread that make the Hobart an excellent kneading choice.
The Hobart uses a dough hook to knead. It is mesmerizing to watch. The whole point of
kneading is to develop the gluten in the flour. Gluten is a protein that gives bread its structure.
Through some kind of miracle (or not, depending on your point of view…), wheat has copious
amounts of gluten. You may have tried to bake rye bread in the past, only to be disappointed by
its incredibly dense crumb structure. Rye has lower gluten content than wheat, so it has a harder
time giving bread a nice infrastructure. In any case, your mission during kneading is to work the
gluten like mad. However, it is possibly to overknead with the Hobart (you’d be hard-pressed to
do it by hand). So don’t knead for more than about ten minutes.
By the time the dough is done kneading, it should look velvety and be slightly sticky. If
you’ve ever baked bread before in 1 or 2 loaf batches, you might have a sense of how the dough
should be. However, I’ve had more success with large batches if I leave the dough slightly
wetter and more malleable that for small batches. It stands to reason that if you combine 10
perfectly formed balls of dough, the resulting ball will be less inclined to hold its form. There’s
just too much material to support. So, don’t be alarmed if your bread doesn’t look like
something Martha Stewart would place daintily on a lightly floured countertop. We’re making
industrial strength bread here. It should take over everything in sight, including your sanity.
Don’t worry. Losing your sanity is part of the process.

Step 3: Rising

		Somehow this part is magical.  You thought you knew what was going on.  You 
	measured everything out carefully (or not).  You made the sponge and mixed the dough.  The 
	dough looks goods, feels good.  And now you do nothing.  People who say making bread is too 
	much effort: read the previous sentence.  Grease up a pot and place the dough inside.  Cover it 
	and let it rise until doubled.  You let it sit there for an hour or so, and when you come back, it’s 
	huge!  Proof that the world is good.
		Now, you know the bread has risen enough if it has doubled in size.  Other indications of 
	success include poking it with a finger (the indentation will remain) and speaking lovingly to the 
	dough.  At this point you are probably ready to move on to the next step.  This usually involves 
	forming loaves, which means you will want to transfer the dough to a floured surface.  You can 
	punch it down if you want, to remove large air holes, although flattening it a bit once it’s on the 
	surface works just as well.  Sometimes you want large air holes, too.

Step 4: Forming the loaves

There are various types of loaves that can be formed. Some are specific to certain types
of breads. You probably don’t want to form a round with a hole in the center unless you are
making bagels. Baguettes are also fairly stingy with their loaf form. At Synergy, I usually only
ever see free-form rounds or rectangular loaves. So here’s how you make them. If you do it a
certain way, the crumb looks really cool when you slice the bread.
Now, you should make sure that you don’t rip the dough as you break off pieces to form
loaves. You (or your friend the Hobart) worked really hard to develop lots of gluten earlier, and
you don’t want to be stretching and breaking it so close to the end. So get one of the
cutting board scrapers or a knife, and cut pieces off as you need them. This breaks the gluten
minimally, and doesn’t strain it.
To make the free-form loaves, gather your little ball of dough into something vaguely
spherical. Now, grasp the sides of the loaf and pull downward, folding the dough up into the
bottom. Pinch the bottom off. You may need to do this several times to achieve radial
symmetry. In the end you should have something that looks round and smooth. Don’t worry if it
isn’t perfect – it’s a sign that the machines haven’t yet won. If you do it reasonably well, when
you slice the loaf you’ll see a circular pattern in the crumb. You can also see this in loaves that
other people have made, and be able to tell how they shaped the loaf.
To make breadpan loaves, you want to flatten out your piece of dough a little bit, and roll
it up. This will make a nice spiral in the crumb of the finished product. You’ll probably have
some uneven bits of dough hanging off the ends. Fold these under. The loaf will be smooth on
top and oblong. It’ll fill somewhat more than half of the bread pan. Don’t worry about making
the bottom look super nice – if your dough is wet enough the problem will take care of itself. If
you’re even the least bit worried about it, you added too much flour. Take the flour challenge
and see how you like it.

Step 5: Rise again!

		So you made the loaves and they look perfect.  You put them on a baking sheet (which, 
	of course, was oiled or covered in corn meal), or in oiled baking pans.  Now cover them up and 
	let them rise until doubled.  Again, you don’t have to do anything for this part.  The only critical 
	step is knowing how much a loaf has to rise to be doubled.  This gets a little subjective, but a 
	good rule of thumb for loaves in pans is that they should be an inch above the top.  For free-form 
	loaves, if you poke them with your finger, the indentation will slowly fill in.
		At the end of the rise, you may want to slice the tops of the loaves with a sharp knife.  
	This dictates where the steam will escape when the bread is baking.  If you don’t do this, free-
	form loaves will typically split somewhere above the base, giving them an evil grin.  If you are 
	similarly evil, this is probably fine, but you can also make the bread look more inviting by 
	slicing an ‘X’ into the top, or a ‘#.’  Or something more creative.  These cuts should be between 
	¼ and ½ inches deep, depending on how you like the finished product to look.  For loaves in 
	pans, the cuts are not completely necessary, but the common procedure is a straight cut down the 
	middle (producing the classic loaf shape we all know and love).

Step 6: Baking

Preheat the oven before you even think about putting the loaves in. This usually entails
turning it on near the start of the final rise. If you like a crispy crust, put an empty pan in the
bottom of the oven to preheat. Then, when you put the loaves in, throw some ice in the pan and
immediately shut the door. Do not open the door for any reason (short of disaster). This will fill
the oven with steam, which coats the outside of the bread, gelatinizing it and allowing it to
expand and subsequently brown to perfection. Other crust-altering methods will be discussed
later.
Typically the recipe will advise a certain temperature. The oven is finicky. It may help
to preheat it to a higher temperature than the recipe asks for, and then lower the temperature once
you put the bread in. This is because heat escapes every time you open the oven. Once the bread
is in you can lower the temperature to what the recipe calls for. Even then I usually keep the
oven set to about 25 degrees higher than the recipe temperature, just because our ovens are
curious creatures that don’t care at all about your hopes, dreams, or ambitions. They will crush
you if you’re not careful. Don’t give them any leeway.
Near the end of baking, if you’re pretty sure the bread has more or less done its thing, you
can enhance the crispiness of the crust further by taking the loaves out of their pans and putting
them directly on the oven shelves. Leave the door open and bake them this way for 5-10
minutes. The crust will brown further all the way around.
Please make sure your bread is done cooking. You can cut it open to be sure of this. The
crumb will be well formed and uniform throughout. If there is any change in color or
consistency from the outside to the inside, you should probably bake it more. My theory is that
people take bread out too early because the crust looks done. The bread may be delicious for a
short period of time after you take it out, but after an hour or so it will just be soggy. It’s better
to overcook the crust a little bit than to undercook the inside.
If you’re really upset about ruining your crust, you can take some aluminum foil and put
it over the crust. But this is sort of overkill. Bread usually knows what it’s doing in the oven. A
crunchy crust is not necessarily a bad thing. Often it is a good thing.
Also, if you are averse to cutting open one of your beautiful loaves prematurely, you can
search its surface for a small opening where steam has escaped. Stick a thermometer into one of
these holes, into the center of the bread. If it’s done, it’ll probably be at least 200 degrees.

Step 7: You’re done!

		Make sure you clean up your mess…  Although if you did a good enough job, I’m sure 
	no one will mind a little slacking (I didn’t say that).  You might also be interested in examining 
	the bread (including eating it) to see how various things you did along the way played out in the 
	final product.