An Honest Loaf
Time was when the baker of inferior bread could be publicly whipped or pilloried with the offending loaf hung around his neck. In our own woefully lax times, the lover of honest bread, if he can find no honest baker, takes a subtler revenge. He bakes his own.
Homemade breads are well worth the trouble they take and the trouble they take grows progressively smaller with each batch. Bear in mind these few simple directions.
Dry yeast will dissolve best in water that is between 110- 115 F. (125-130 F. for fast rising). To knead bread dough, pull it toward you with the fingers of both hands and then push it down hard and away from you with the heels of your hands; turn it a quarter ways around and repeat. Continue kneading and turning until ball feels smooth and springy and no longer sticks to the board, about 8 to 10 minutes. Some recipes provide for variable amounts of flour; when the dough has absorbed all it can, the balance of the flour will remain on the board. Yeast dough should be allowed to rise only until it doubles in bulk, except where the recipe states otherwise. If it is allowed to rise too long it will fall and even turn sour. Press two fingers into the dough: if the imprint remains the dough has risen enough. All yeast doughs should be allowed to rise in a warm place, 80- 85 F, free from drafts. When the loaves are thoroughly baked the bottoms will sound hollow when tapped with the handle of a knife. Bread should be removed from the pan immediately after baking and put on a wire rack to cool. Never wrap the bread while it is still warm. Bread wrapped while hot moulds quickly.
Other Common Causes of Inferior Bread
Poor Flour-- A cheap flour may be expensive, because it makes a loaf inferior in texture, colour, flavour, and volume.
Old Yeast-- Dead yeast plants cannot leaven bread. Yeast which has been stored away until many of the yeast plants are dead will act very slowly if at all and will not give good result.
Too Much or Too Little Kneading-- Dough kneaded too much becomes sticky and will not rise well in the oven. Dough kneaded too little makes streaked bread, poor in texture, which sometimes contains lumps that might have been worked out in kneading.
Too Much Flour--Too stiff a dough makes course-textured bread of small volume and dry crumb.
Over-Rising-- Too long rising gives a very porous loaf with little flavour, a pale crust, and a porous crumb with broken, irregular texture. The bread crumbles badly. If the rising continues too long, the bread may become sour.
Under-Rising--Too little rising gives a loaf which is small and flat. It browns too quickly in the oven. The crumb is compact and dull.
Too Cool Oven-- Bread will continue to rise too long if the temperature is too low. The result is bread that is very porous in the center and upper part of the loaf. The bread dries out before it begins to bake.
Too Hot an Oven-- The dough crusts over immediately and cannot continue to rise as it should the first ten or fifteen minutes it is in the oven. The crust becomes very brown before the crumb is baked.
Rope in Bread-- Rope may appear at any time but is most likely during hot, damp weather. It gives bread a ropy, stringy quality and a very disagreeable odour and makes it unfit for use. It is due to a type of bacillus which may be in any one or more of the ingredients used in bread.
If rope develops, all utensils used in making bread and containers in which bread is stored should be sterilized with boiling water and rinsed with water to which vinegar has been added. Since acid inhibits the growth of the bacillus, 1 tablespoon vinegar for each quart of liquid should be added to each subsequent batch of dough until all the materials in stock at the time the rope appeared are used up.
©Al Girvan 1990
