Other Ingredients
To prepare the dough, the flour must be mixed with a liquid base (that can be water or milk) mixed with a small number of liquid fats like cooking oil or melted butter. A whisked egg is also often used in some bread recipes to make them taste more delicious and richer. For the leavening of the bread, a very small amount of salt and sugar is added to the flour. The sugar is also important for the yeast to work and produce CO2 inside the dough. Sugar and fat are used in a small amount as they can make the bread crumbly when used in greater proportion. So, to keep the bread soft and smooth, keep the proportion of fat and sugar lower. Besides these basic ingredients, several other optional ones are used to season a bread differently like cinnamon powder or some shredded cheese, dried herbs, etc.
How Bread is Formed
Before baking, there are a few important steps that make the bread soft and fluffy. If you learn and practice them right, your bread-making skills will surely improve. The first step is to bring all the ingredients together in a step-by-step process, then mix those ingredients. But wait! When it comes to bread making, it is not just normal mixing of the ingredients; you have to add just the right ingredients at the right time and mix them according to the dough mixing techniques as specified by a particular recipe.
Mixing
When it comes to bread making, you can simply mix the ingredients because we need a dough that is perfect in texture, neither too thin nor too thick or firm. The softness and fluffiness after baking depend on the texture of the dough before the baking. That is why mixing has to be perfect. Usually, it is the dry ingredients that are mixed first and separately, and then the liquid ingredients are gradually added to the dry flour mixture. If you are using active dry yeast, you might need to mix it first with some warm water and sugar to activate it and then the remaining liquid ingredients.
Yeast mixture is left for a few minutes to rehydrate, and then the liquid solution has to be mixed with flour. When the ingredients are mixed, they all come together to form a rough dough. You can move on to the next step, and that is kneading.
The Art of Kneading the Dough
Kneading is an important part of bread making, which must be practiced and learned carefully. To become an apt baker, it is important to know all the important techniques of kneading. A good kneading makes the dough smooth and elastic. It is important to note here that over-kneading can also make the bread firm and tough, which should also be avoided. Kneading must be carried out to the exact point when the dough is ready.
The question is why kneading is needed in the first place? Is it possible to bake a dough without kneading? Well, there are proteins present in the dough, which turn more elastic when the dough is kneaded well. The gluten present in the wheat spreads well within the dough when it is mixed and kneaded well. The following are the different means that you can use to knead your dough well.
1. By Hand
One of the easiest traditional methods is to knead the dough. With your hands, you can easily control the consistency of the dough. When you are kneading with the hands, it takes ten minutes to knead the dough into the desired consistency. To do so, it must be transferred to a lightly floured surface, or you can use oily hands to knead the dough. Kneading is required both before leavening the bread and after leavening it.
When the dough is first prepared out of the basic ingredients, it looks rough in texture. It should then be kneaded with folding and stretching techniques. Punch the dough with your fist and fold it again. Repeat these steps and continue folding and stretching the dough 3–4 times. The dough turns silky and smooth after repeated kneading for ten minutes. If the dough turns out to be too sticky, then gradually add flour to the dough while kneading it continuously. Kneading in this way can also be carried out inside a large mixing bowl.
2. Mechanical Kneading
Not everyone is a fan of hand kneading as it gets a bit messy. Don’t worry! You can always make good use of your bread machine, food processor, or a stand mixer to make a silky-smooth dough. Bread machines are specially designed to give the dough a perfect texture and consistency, and since it is automated, it can quickly knead the dough without minimal human efforts. But do not rely too much on the machine as it can easily over-knead the dough if left unchecked.
A stand mixer is another good way to knead the dough, and it is relatively faster than kneading with your hands. After adding all the ingredients to the mixing bowl of the stand mixer, fix a dough hook on the mixer and knead the dough for eight minutes. In any automatic or machine mixer, eight minutes is sufficient time to knead the dough. If you are preparing too much dough at a time, it is best to divide the dough into tw0 halves and then knead each half separately.
Results of Under-Kneading
A dough that is not kneaded well, either by hands or by a machine, will not get enough strength and elasticity; as a result, the baked bread will not inflate well, and it will stay flat. The bread’s texture will become crunchy, firm, and less fluffy. As soon as the gas particles present in the dough release out of the dough, the bread will get dense and flat. For this reason, under-kneading should be taken care of. Most of the time, our baking bread experiments turn out to be a failure, not because we are not using the right ingredients or the right method, but only because we do not spend enough time kneading. Eight to ten minutes of kneading is therefore essential to get a soft and fluffy bread.
Leavening of bread
The leavening of bread is the most important part of bread making. That particular taste and texture that every bread has are all because of the leavening agents that are added in a small amount. Those leavening agents are responsible for infusing small air bubbles within the dough. When such dough is baked, the air bubble escapes, leaving the dough fluffy and porous. All leavening agents take some time to work, and during this leavening time, the CO2 is released gradually, which raises the dough. It usually takes 2–3 hours after making the dough for bread to rise to double its size.
Different Types of Leavening Agents
Leavening does not occur on its own; it requires certain leavening agents that could add minute air bubbles into the dough and make it porous and spongy. In baking, we use two types of leavening agents: biological and chemical leavening agents. Both types work differently, but they are proven effective in baking bread of all sorts.
1. Biological Leavening Agents
In baking, the only biological leavening agent that we use is yeast. It is a microorganism that can ferment and break down the saccharides or sugars present in the dough while releasing carbon dioxides and alcohol. The alcohol quickly evaporates from the dough, and the CO2 also escapes during the baking of the bread. But it leaves the bread spongy and porous. Yeast is also responsible for infusing a distinct taste and aroma into the bread. Yeast comes in three varieties: dry active, instant, and fresh yeast.
2. Chemical Leavening Agents
Two chemical agents can be used to leaven the bread: baking powder and baking soda. Both work differently than usual yeast but work well when you don’t have the time to leave the bread to rise. They are not highly recommended for bread but can be used when yeast is not available.
The Rise of the Dough
