How Bread Works

Cooking Skills: Bread 1

Chapter 1 · How Bread Works

Skill goal

Understand what the four ingredients of bread do, and bake three simple loaves from scratch.

The basics

Bread is only flour, water, salt and yeast. What changes the result is how you combine them, how long you wait and how hot the oven is. This chapter shows what each ingredient does and gives you three loaves: one that needs no effort, one that needs no yeast, and one that needs a bit of both.

Figure 1. Four ingredients, four jobs. Almost every bread in this course is a variation on these four.

What each ingredient does

Flour: wheat flour contains two proteins that join with water to make gluten, a stretchy network that traps gas. Strong (bread) flour has more protein than plain flour, so it makes a chewier, taller loaf.
Water: makes the gluten and wakes the yeast. The amount of water compared with flour is called the hydration: more water makes a wetter dough and an airier crumb.
Salt: adds flavour, tightens the gluten and slows the yeast. A loaf with no salt tastes flat and rises too fast.
Yeast: a living organism that eats sugars from the flour and produces carbon dioxide gas, which puffs the dough up. Heat from baking kills it.

Weigh, don't scoop

A cup of flour can weigh anything from 120 to 160 g depending on how you scoop it, which is the difference between a good loaf and a brick. Weigh flour and water on digital scales. Bakers describe a recipe in percentages of the flour weight: 500 g flour with 320 ml water (320 g) is 64% hydration, and 400 g flour with 300 ml water is 75%.

Yeast type	How to use it	Amount for 500 g flour
Fast-action (easy-bake) dried	Mix straight into the flour	1 sachet (7 g)
Ordinary active dried	Stir into warm water with a pinch of sugar and wait for it to froth for about 10 minutes	About 7 g (check the pack)
Fresh	Crumble into the warm water	About 15 g (check the supplier's advice)

These conversions are a rough guide; follow the packet if it differs. The recipes in this course use fast-action yeast.

Water temperature

Use lukewarm water for a quick dough (comfortable on the inside of your wrist, roughly 35 to 40°C) and cool water for a slow overnight one. Very hot water (above about 55°C) can kill the yeast and the dough won't rise.

The bread-making steps

Mix the ingredients into a dough.
Knead (or wait) so the gluten develops.
Prove (rise) until it has grown.
Shape and give a second rise.
Bake until golden and hollow-sounding.
Cool before cutting, because bread keeps cooking and setting as it cools.

Try it

Level 1 · Start here

No-knead bowl loaf

20 minutes of work, 12 to 18 hours rising, 40 minutes baking1 loaf (about 10 slices)letting time do the kneading

The easiest bread there is: mix, leave overnight, shape, bake. A tiny amount of yeast and a long rise give flavour and structure without kneading. Weigh everything.

Ingredients (10 portions)

400 g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
8 g fine salt (about 1½ tsp)
¼ tsp fast-action dried yeast
300 ml cool water

In a large bowl, stir the flour, salt and yeast together. Add the water and mix with a wooden spoon or your hand until there are no dry patches. It will be a wet, sticky, shaggy dough.
Cover the bowl with a plate or a damp cloth and leave at room temperature for 12 to 18 hours, until it is bubbly and more than doubled.
Tip the dough onto a well-floured surface. Fold the edges into the middle, flip it over and tuck it into a rough ball. Place it, seam side down, on a floured cloth or baking paper and cover for 1 to 2 hours until puffy.
Half an hour before baking, heat the oven to 230°C (210°C fan) with a baking tray on the middle shelf and an empty roasting tin on the bottom.
Slide the loaf (on its baking paper) onto the hot tray. Pour a cupful of boiling water into the roasting tin and close the door quickly. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until deep golden and it sounds hollow when tapped underneath.
Cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

Raw flour and steam

Level 1 · No yeast

Soda bread

10 minutes of work, 35 minutes baking1 loaf (8 slices)a bread with no yeast and no waiting

Soda bread rises from a chemical reaction between bicarbonate of soda and the acid in buttermilk, not from yeast. It is ready in under an hour. Handle it as little as possible.

Ingredients (8 portions)

450 g plain flour (white, or half wholemeal), plus extra for dusting
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
400 ml buttermilk (or milk with 1 tbsp lemon juice stirred in and left for 10 minutes)

Heat the oven to 200°C (180°C fan). Dust a baking tray with flour.
Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a bowl and mix. Make a well and pour in most of the buttermilk. Mix quickly with your hand into a soft, sticky dough, adding the rest only if there are dry patches.
Turn onto a floured surface, shape lightly into a round about 4 cm thick (don't knead) and put it on the tray. Cut a deep cross in the top, about two-thirds of the way down.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until golden and it sounds hollow when tapped underneath. Cool on a rack, wrapped in a clean tea towel if you like a softer crust. Eat the same or next day.

Why the cross?

The deep cross lets the heat reach the middle of a dense, thick loaf, so it cooks through. It is also where the loaf breaks into four easy wedges.

Level 2 · Yeast dough

A basic white tin loaf

2 hours 30 minutes in all (30 minutes of work)1 loaf (12 slices)making, proving and baking a yeast dough

Your first kneaded loaf. Chapter 2 explains kneading and proving in detail; here just follow the steps.

Ingredients (12 portions)

500 g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
1 sachet (7 g) sachet fast-action dried yeast
10 g fine salt (about 2 tsp)
320 ml lukewarm water
1 tbsp olive or vegetable oil, plus extra for the tin

Mix the flour, yeast and salt in a large bowl, keeping the salt and yeast on opposite sides. Add the water and oil and stir into a rough dough.
Turn out and knead for about 10 minutes: push the dough away with the heel of your hand, fold it back, turn a quarter, and repeat, until smooth and springy.
Put it in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave somewhere warm for about 1 hour, until doubled in size.
Oil a 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin. Press the dough flat, roll it up tightly and place it in the tin, seam side down. Cover and leave for 30 to 45 minutes, until the dough has risen just above the rim.
Heat the oven to 220°C (200°C fan). Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until golden and hollow when tapped underneath. Turn out onto a rack and cool for at least 30 minutes.

Raw flour

Experiments

Experiment

Salt and yeast

Does salt matter?

Make two small doughs (100 g flour, 1 g yeast, 65 ml water): one with 2 g salt, one with none. Put each in a jar and mark the level.

Look for: The unsalted dough rises faster but tastes bland. The salted dough rises more slowly and steadily. Bake a little of each if you can and taste.

Experiment

Warm or cold water

Speed of the rise.

Make two identical small doughs, one with lukewarm water and one with cold water from the fridge. Leave both at room temperature and mark the level after 30 minutes.

Look for: The warm dough rises faster. Cold water slows the yeast, which is why overnight doughs are mixed cool.

Experiment

Strong or plain flour

Protein in action.

Make the white tin loaf recipe in half quantities twice: one with strong bread flour and one with plain flour. Bake both.

Look for: Strong flour gives a taller loaf with a chewy crumb; plain flour gives a squatter, softer, more cake-like loaf.

Experiment

Weighing or scooping

How accurate is a cup?

Scoop a cup of flour three times, weighing each cup on your scales.

Look for: The three weights will differ by tens of grams. That is why bread recipes use scales.

Tasting notes

What I tried	Method or amount	What I saw	What I thought	Will I do it again?
No-knead bowl loaf
Soda bread
Basic white tin loaf
Salt and yeast
Warm vs cold water
Strong vs plain flour
Weighing vs scooping

Troubleshooting

Problem	Likely cause	What to do
Dough didn't rise	Yeast dead (old, or too-hot water), or too cold a room	Check the date; use lukewarm water; give it more time somewhere warm
Dense, heavy loaf	Not enough rising, too little water, or too little yeast	Prove until doubled; weigh the water; check the yeast
Pale, soft crust	Oven not hot enough, or no steam	Preheat fully; try the steam tray
Flat top, spread-out loaf	Over-proved or too wet	Shorten the second rise; use a tin for wet doughs
Soda bread dense and bitter	Too much bicarbonate, or over-mixed	Measure level spoons; mix briefly
Gummy, damp middle	Cut too soon, or underbaked	Cool 30 minutes; tap the base for a hollow sound

Flour, heat and allergens

Raw flour: flour is a raw ingredient and can carry bacteria such as E. coli, which are killed only by baking or cooking. Don't taste raw dough, don't let children eat or play with it, and wash your hands, bowls and surfaces after handling flour and dough.

Hot ovens, trays and steam: use dry oven gloves, pull the shelf out rather than reaching in, and put hot trays and tins on a heatproof surface. If you put a tray of boiling water in the oven for steam, pour it carefully with the oven door open a little and your face well back: the steam is far hotter than the water.

Allergens: bread contains wheat (gluten). Check the recipe for milk, butter, egg, sesame and other seeds, and nuts, and label them if you share the bread. Gluten-free bread uses different flours and methods and isn't covered in this course.

Mould: if bread has mould on it, throw the whole loaf away: the spores spread through the soft crumb where you can't see them. Don't sniff it. Keep bread in a bread bin or freeze slices to avoid waste.

Checkpoint: can you do this now?

I can name the four ingredients and what each does.
I weigh flour and water.
I can make a no-knead loaf and a soda bread.
I can make a simple yeast loaf from start to finish.
I never taste raw dough and I wash my hands after handling flour.

Next chapter

Cooking Skills: Bread 1, chapter 2 is Kneading and Proving: how to develop the gluten and know when the dough has risen enough.