Yes, baking bread at home is, indeed, fun! It can also be lucrative, but that’s for another chapter. In the meantime, what follows is a close-up look at what happens in the bread-baking process and the traditional techniques used in this process.
What Really Happens in Bread Baking? The process of making bread dough is the process of growing a culture of yeast and bacteria in a mix of flour and water. This is also known as fermentation: it happens in brewing and distilling, as well as in baking (and in the preparation of certain other foods: kimchee, kombucha, and kefir, for example). We can control this process through time and temperature. Within reason, the higher the temperature the faster the culture grows. (See below.) While these micro-organisms are fairly resilient, one still must treat them gently (not too hot, not too cold, not too much mixing, lots of rest) if one wants them to cooperate.
I don’t pretend to be a biochemist, and there are some fine widely-available accounts of the ins and outs of the chemistry and biology involved in this fermentation process. For our purposes, let’s just say that there are a couple of major things going on.
What the Hell is Gluten, Anyway? First, flour, which, as milled grain, is mostly starch and some protein, undergoes a distinct change when it is mixed with water. The starch absorbs the water and expands and the protein molecules rearrange themselves into long strands called….. wait for it…. gluten!! Yes, that’s all gluten is, long strands of protein. These strands form an interlacing network, which is very important for bread. (Also, the jury is still out on what’s behind “gluten intolerance.” Not all gluten is created equal. Research from Europe suggests that it can be mitigated by a lengthy fermentation process and that some well-fermented breads contain gluten that is, indeed, tolerable.)
Second, the yeast is going to town. It’s gorging on the sugars that are present in the flour. As it feeds it expels carbon dioxide gas and alcohol. The alcohol adds to the flavor (and is, unfortunately, burned off in the baking) and the bubbles of CO2 are trapped in the gluten network. These gas bubbles are what make the dough and the loaves rise, giving the finished product those delightful holes.
During baking, the dough temperature is rising, of course, and the yeast speeds up as things get hotter (see above), producing gas at a faster and faster rate that causes the loaves to rise at a faster and faster rate until it’s too hot and the gas and alcohol burn off and the yeast dies. And so that’s what’s left when you pull your loaves out of the oven: holes where the gas used to be (about 80% of a loaf’s volume is empty space), long strands of gluten, puffed-up starch, and dead yeast.
Oddly enough, this happens to be a food that has been enjoyed by people around the world for at least 6000 years.
Traditional Bread Baking Techniques in a Home Kitchen There’s not much to it, really. As bakers have always done, you’ll measure out wet and dry ingredients, mix them together, wait for these mixtures to ferment and grow, shape them into loaves, wait for the loaves to ferment and grow, and then bake them.
People are generally impressed when I tell them that it takes about 36 hours over three days to make my bread. (Using commercial yeast this process can, alas, take as little as three or four hours.) During this time, the yeast works much harder than I do. For most of the 36 hours I can be doing something else while the dough is quietly resting either near the oven or, depending on the dough, in the fridge.
Because you, most likely, will be baking a few loaves of one type of bread rather than dozens of loaves of several types, most all the work can be done in the traditional way: by hand.
One of the great tactile pleasures of life is mixing dough by hand. It also represents one of the greatest challenges for beginning bread bakers. The thought of one’s hands covered in a sticky mass of messy, unruly dough can be daunting. However, if you keep your hands wet (by dunking them often into a nearby bowl of warm water) you will not only keep them relatively dough-free, you’ll also be adding a bit more moisture to the dough, which is always a good thing and is certainly a better approach to the challenge than keeping one’s hands covered in flour.
Once the dough is mixed, it’s mostly a matter of gently strengthening the gluten by stretching and folding the dough by hand. (Wet hands are good for this, as well.) This is not to be confused with kneading, which was a traditional technique for a while, but has been discredited!
The idea is to be as gentle as possible with the dough, handling it as little as possible. The most traditional technique of all is to just let it sit and do its thing. Because wild yeast works much more slowly than commercial yeast, you just have to plan accordingly.
Shaping loaves is, again, done by hand in the work area. (I’ll discuss shaping, in depth, below.) When the loaves are ready to bake, you prepare the oven and, when the oven is ready, transfer the loaves to the very hot oven, using the same swift sliding technique that bakers have always used.
The two most important traditional elements to the oven environment for baking are sufficient heat and sufficient moisture. There are fairly straightforward techniques for ensuring that your oven produces both. (And, in case you have one of those modern ovens, some simple workarounds that also yield fine results.) When your oven has enough heat and moisture, your loaf will rise majestically and brown enticingly, with an aroma and flavor that are irresistible.