Bread Alone

I am eating handfuls of foccacia from the freezer, and to throw in a few more "f's," I am feeling fit to be fried. That is because we have to change our longstanding email addresses and switch our ISP package. One doesn't think how connected we are to those little email addresses until they vanish. And then voila; you are spending hours cleaning house on your email folders, notifying friends and eating fistfuls of old bread that once was good about four months ago. Switching tactics from whining to wonder of everything, let me refresh with a few Twizzlers and try a different outlook.

This fall I had a marvelous and gifted Chef Instructor for the breads and viennoiserie class. Although I added several new burn to my arms - they might as well be tats - I learned incredibly good things about bread. I've always had a strong and passionate relationship with bread of all shapes and sizes - but I didn't know that in each loaf, there are secret relationships that make large differences in outcome, just like life. All bread is based on relationships between flour and everything else. Salt and yeast have a relationship; sugar and protein, butter and eggs, it goes on and on. Each ingredient affects another in such unusual ways that you could spend your whole six weeks just looking at reactions in mixing bowls, our version of the petri dish. Each of these relationships has a percentage tied to the weight of the flour.  I'm not here to explain how this works; for that you can read in Peter Reinhart's book "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." 

Just know that with the following percentages of ingredients, you can create an original bread recipe that is unique to your household:

Ingredient Levels

Flour 100%
Hydration (such as water)  65-70%
salt 1.8-2.25%
fresh yeast 1.2%
sugar 0-15%
fat 0-15%
herbs 0-1%
nuts/seeds 0-20%
dried fruit/cheese 0-20%

You're thinking Mama Mia, where are you going with this? Here's how it works in baking. Using the weight of the flour in your recipe, you can calculate how many ounces each OTHER ingredient should weigh in order for the bread to come out right. Some recipes don't have fat and sugar, herbs and nuts, and that's fine. But if you want them in your recipe, you need to add them in correct proportions for the best outcome.

One of our class projects required us to create an original recipe, using the structure of math percentages, and to use only ingredients from an approved list. I loved it. Such a challenge made you think about the relationships and how best to work them. How do you actually DO the math?

I'll tell you how. Decide the percentage of each ingredient (except the flour; it is always 100% or, if you're using more than one flour in the recipe, must add up to 100%) you want in your recipe. Base your numbers on the percentage ranges I just gave you above. Now add up all the percentage numbers in your recipe to get a total baker's percent. For example, if we used all the highest numbers from the list above, the total would come to: 229.45%.

That is your total baker's percent. Now what? Well, how many ounces of dough do you want to make? Let's just choose a number, say, 60 ounces of dough. OK, it's simple division from here. Divide 60 by the total baker's percent, 2.2945 (remember, you have to move the decimal over 2 places to the left when turning the percent number into something you can plug into a calculator). The result is: 26.15 (rounding up to the 100th place).

What does 26.15 stand for? That's the weight of the flour in your new recipe. From there, you multiply that flour weight number by each of the ingredient percentages to get your recipe weights. For example: 1.00 (100% times 26.15) = 26.15, and that's your flour weight. Now take salt at 2.25%, or .0225 x 26.15 = .59. And that is the weight of your salt in ounces. Grab a scale and you're ready to go.

Did I mention we weigh all our ingredients? Now repeat the math step, multiplying each percentage by the flour weight and fill in all your new numbers for weights. Easy, yes? If I can do it, it can be done.

Baker's percent was one of the most outstanding and useful lessons I learned - and there's another one to know about. Friction math. Yes, the impact of heat from friction on mixing dough. I always thought that the water in which you proof the yeast should be like baby's bathwater, not too warm but not too cool. Turns out this is WRONG. Sometimes the water needs to be cold!

Why, you say? Think about it: You can't do much about the air temp or the ingredient temps, but you can alter the warmth or coolness of the water you add. And if you can control the temperature of your final dough such that it falls between, say, 75 and 78 degrees, it will always perform in a predictable way that results in a good ending. To do so, you need to take into account the air temperature, flour temperature, even the temperature created in a mixing bowl by the process of mixing - the friction temperature- before you know how cool or warm the water you use should be.

I was going to try and explain how to calculate the friction factor, but you know what? Here's information on how to calculate the temperature your water should be.

Play with it. And when you're through mixing your dough, take its temperature and see where you land.

Play dough.