The Baking Answer Book (44 page)

Q
What kind of salt is best for bread-baking? Is it always necessary to bake with salt, or can I leave it out if I am on a low-salt diet?

A
Table salt will work in all bread recipes, although many experienced bakers will argue that fleur de sel and other fine sea salts give bread a better flavor.

In answer to the second question, absolutely do not leave out the salt when making bread. There are a few notable exceptions (Tuscan saltless bread being the most famous), but most breads need salt for reasons other than flavor. Salt works to dehydrate yeast, slowing down the fermentation process. While too much salt will kill the yeast, the right amount will allow time for the bread to develop a tasty amount of acid (the byproduct of yeast and bacteria production) that gives bread its wonderful flavor and aroma. It also allows time for the gluten in the flour to gain strength. While dough without salt will rise much more quickly than dough with salt, it will also more likely collapse in the oven because its gluten structure hasn’t had time to properly develop.

Not only does salt give gluten time to develop, it actually aids in its development, strengthening, tightening, and compacting the network of protein strands. Thus developed, the gluten web is able to more effectively stretch and expand when the gases produced by the yeast heat up and expand in the oven, and it is able to resist collapse when those gases dissipate.

Q
How does saltless Tuscan bread keep its shape?

A
The recipe for saltless Tuscan bread dates back to the Middle Ages, when Tuscan bakers decided they’d rather bake bread without salt than pay a high tax on what was then considered a precious commodity. To bake successfully without salt, they developed a few techniques to help the bread keep its shape in the oven. While bread dough with salt can be kneaded and pummeled with no ill effects (in fact, strong handling will further develop the gluten), saltless dough must be handled gently so as not to destroy the fragile strands of gluten that have barely developed. Overmixing, overkneading, and rough shaping will all inhibit the dough’s rise in the oven. During the dough’s first and second rise, it is watched carefully. Without salt, the dough ferments quickly. As soon as it doubles in size it must be gently shaped, and as soon as the shaped loaves have fermented sufficiently they must go into the oven. Overproofing will result in a flat bread, because the underdeveloped gluten structure will collapse under the pressure of too much carbon dioxide produced by the yeast.

Q
There seem to be quite a few types of packaged yeast available. Can you explain what’s out there and what the differences are between them?

A
When I first started baking bread as a teenager, there were just two types of yeast available at the supermarket: active dry yeast, which came in a strip of three detachable packets, and fresh cake yeast, which was kept in the refrigerator section near the butter and milk.
Active dry yeast
is dehydrated yeast that becomes active when stirred into water. Although the packages display an expiration date, active dry yeast, stored properly will keep indefinitely.
Fresh yeast
(also called compressed yeast) is a moist cake that must be stored in the refrigerator and will begin to grow mold and lose its power to raise bread in a matter of days. It is more practical for professionals, who go through it rapidly, than for even an avid home baker, who is unlikely to use it up before it spoils. These two types of yeast can be used interchangeably in recipes (one 2¼-teaspoon package of active dry yeast has the same bread-raising power as ¼ ounce of fresh yeast), although these days you are less likely to find fresh yeast in the supermarket than you are a menu of new specialty yeasts that have come on the market in recent years.

Bread-machine yeast
, sometimes called
instant yeast
, was developed for use in bread machines, where there is no opportunity for yeast to be dissolved in water before it is combined with flour. It works just like active dry yeast, except it does not have to be rehydrated in water. Just add it to the dry ingredients and it will become fully hydrated during kneading. I like instant
yeast better than plain old active dry yeast because there is more margin for error. Even if you don’t soak it, it will work.

Rapid-rise yeast
should not be confused with active dry yeast or instant yeast, from which it is derived. It is a dry yeast that has been packaged with yeast foods and enzymes to accelerate fermentation. In most straight dough recipes, the bread is allowed to rise twice, once in a bowl and once after the dough is shaped into loaves. With rapid-rise yeast, the first rise can be skipped and you can proceed directly to shaping the dough, allowing it to rise just once before baking. It is certainly quicker to make bread using rapid-rise yeast, but professional artisan bakers and passionate amateurs would argue that the longer the dough is allowed to ferment, the more time it has to develop great flavor. So if you are not in a hurry, skip the rapid-rise yeast and let your dough rise twice.

Q
What does “sourdough” really mean?

A
Most people think that yeast for bread must come out of an envelope or jar from the supermarket, but the fact is that people had been making yeast-risen breads for hundreds if not thousands of years before the invention of packaged yeast in the late nineteenth century, and some continue to do so today.

How? The answer is sourdough, which is nothing more than wild yeast, captured from the air, and cultivated in a mixture of flour and water until it has proliferated enough to be
able to raise bread. Wild yeast lives in the flour and air in your kitchen. When flour is mixed with water, it makes the starches available to the yeast in and around the bowl. The yeast feed on the starches, proliferating. As the yeast multiplies, the mixture becomes a powerful leavener, able to raise bread.

Although it is the yeast in the culture that makes dough rise, it is the friendly bacteria, called lactobacilli, that give it its name. These bacteria, like yeast, live in flour and air and proliferate if fed. When yeast feeds on the sugars in flour, it produces carbon dioxide. When lactobacilli feed, they produce acids. Depending on how wildly they are allowed to reproduce, they lend the culture a mild to strong sour flavor.

Q
So what is sourdough bread?

A
Contrary to popular belief, a sourdough bread is not necessarily a sour-tasting loaf, although it can be. A sourdough bread is a loaf that has been raised with a sourdough, or natural, starter. Throughout Europe, breads made with natural starters run the gamut from very mild and sweet to highly acidic, depending on how acidic the starter was, how much starter is added, proportionately, to the dough, and how long the dough is allowed to ferment. In this country, bread advertised as sourdough often does taste sour, but this is because bakers purposely ferment their breads to meet customers’ expectations about flavor.

Q
If sourdough is a natural starter cultivated in your own kitchen, then what is the sourdough starter sold at baking supply shops? How is it different from instant yeast?

A
The item you refer to is dehydrated sourdough starter (see Resources). Instant yeast is also dehydrated, but differs from dehydrated sourdough in that it contains a single strain of yeast, bred for hardiness and reliability. Packaged dehydrated sourdough contains any number of strains of yeast, for more flavorful bread.

But the major difference is in the way the two types of yeast are used. Instant yeast is added directly to bread dough. Dehydrated sourdough starter is mixed with a small amount of flour and water, and allowed to stand until the yeast has had time to multiply and become strong enough to raise bread dough (as little as 24 hours, in comparison with the days or weeks it takes to cultivate a culture from scratch). Then a piece of this culture is mixed into dough instead of packaged yeast. The remaining portion can be fed with additional water and flour, allowed to ferment, and used again and again, the same way a homemade sourdough culture would be used.

A PREFERMENT GLOSSARY

A preferment is a starter used in bread recipes where the dough is built in two stages. First, a small portion of dough — usually a mixture of flour, water, and packaged yeast — is mixed together and allowed to stand until the yeast multiplies. Then, the preferment becomes an ingredient in the larger batch of dough, functioning in place of, or sometimes in addition to, packaged yeast to raise the bread. A preferment greatly extends the fermentation time of the bread without risking overfermentation. During this long fermentation, the taste of the dough matures and flavorful acids develop, further enhancing the complex character of the bread.

There are many types of preferments, coming out of a variety of bread baking traditions. The very oldest preferments are sourdoughs, which require days of fermentation to properly develop. Newer preferments using packaged yeast, generally called sponges, may ferment for as little as an hour before being mixed in with dough. The texture of preferments ranges from dry and claylike to liquid. But all of them share the goal of slowing down the fermentation process in order to craft a more complex bread.

Here are descriptions of a few of the most common preferments:

Barm.
Originally, this term referred to the yeasty foam that rises to the top of fermenting malt liquors such as ale, which was used to make sourdough starter as far back as the sixteenth century in England. Today, it refers to a wet sponge made with packaged yeast or a bread raised with this type of sponge such as barmbrack, a traditional Irish tea bread.

Biga.
The term used in Italy for a stiff, claylike preferment made with packaged yeast that is freshly mixed and fermented
for 12 hours or so before being mixed into a batch of bread. The result is a fresh-tasting, wheaty loaf with none of the acidity of sourdough breads made with longer-fermented preferments.

Levain.
The French term for sourdough starter. Traditionally, levain is made by kneading flour and water into a stiff dough, allowing it to capture wild yeast, and adding fresh flour and water daily to encourage yeast growth while keeping the growth of acids under control.

Pâte fermentée.
A newer style of French preferment, using packaged yeast. It can be made fresh, with packaged yeast, water, and flour, and allowed to ferment for a day or so before being used in bread dough, or it can be made by saving a piece of dough from one batch of dough, allowing it to ferment, and then adding the old dough to the next day’s batch of bread.

Poolish.
Another French-style preferment, whose name is an homage to Polish bakers who brought the technique to France. Poolish is a wet mixture made from packaged yeast, as opposed to the dryer pâte fermentée. Not as powerful as pâte fermentée, it is often used in conjunction with more packaged yeast kneaded directly into the bread dough to raise it.

Sourdough.
The English term for a preferment employing a culture of wild yeast, maintained by the periodic addition of flour and water. It is also commonly used to refer to breads raised with such a culture.

Sponge.
A wet preferment made with packaged yeast, but different from a poolish in that it is generally allowed to ferment for a briefer period, sometimes just an hour. Sponges contain a relatively large amount of packaged yeast, so no additional yeast is necessary for the bread dough.

Daniel Leader’s Ciabatta

This recipe was developed by baking expert Daniel Leader after studying with artisan bakers in Verona. Biga, the typical Italian preferment, must be made the night before you want to bake, to allow the yeast to multiply and the flavors of the wheat to develop. In addition to demonstrating how a preferment is used to add flavor and aid in the rise of the dough, this recipe also shows how the slow fermentation (between 3 and 4 hours) of the dough itself encourages the bread’s beautifully large, open crumb. This is a wet dough, which makes the finished bread light and airy. But the moisture also makes it difficult to knead by hand, so use a mixer for best results.

MAKES 2 LOAVES

FOR THE BIGA:

cup (2.3 ounces) warm water

½ teaspoon (0.1 ounce) instant yeast