For perfect bread, try turning your oven into a proofer

Baking and Pastry, Breads No Responses »
Sep 292009

breadwithknifeMaking bread seems daunting, but it doesn’t have to be.  One of the steps with which you may be least familiar if you don’t make a lot of yeast products is proofing.

Proofing is simply putting the yeast dough in an environment to keep the yeast happy and alive.  There are two main factors in this: heat and humidity.

In well-equipped professional kitchens (unlike the one I work in) there is usually a proofer.  This is basically a metal box with a heating element and some sort of steam source (I’ve seen them as simple as a metal bowl sitting on the heating element).  These fancy things have both adjustable heat and humidity settings and in a professional setting are very useful.  However, let’s face it – they take up a lot of space and only do one thing, so most places go without.

The simplest way to proof unshaped dough is to place it in a greased bowl and cover with a moist towel.  This will work perfectly fine, but depending on the ambient temperature could take a while.  It also doesn’t work too well for shaped doughs such as loaves and baguettes.  The best solution I’ve found for the final proof of the shaped dough is to turn your oven into a proofer.

Keeping in mind that yeast dies at 140ºF, turn your oven onto the lowest setting it can be on.  This is often even before the numbers on the dial start showing anything – 100ºF works just fine.  Place a bowl (preferably metal) of warm water (not boiling) on the oven floor, and place the bread, on the tray you want to bake it on, above the bowl of water, allowing enough room for the steam to circulate.  Keep in mind that by the time it’s ready to bake the dough will have doubled in size, so don’t put the loaves too close together.  If your oven has a dodgy thermostat, as many do, check to make sure it isn’t too hot with an oven thermometer.

To test if it’s fully proofed, when the dough is roughly doubled, press your finger ever so gently onto it.  If it springs back, it still needs more time.  If it slowly springs back but leaves a bit of a dent, it’s ready to go.  Remove both the bread and the bowl from the oven, turn the temperature back up and bake away.

Posted by Victoria at 7:44 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Types of flour and their substitutions

Baking and Pastry 3 Responses »
Jul 142009

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Lately, Culinary Tips has been getting a lot of searches for types of flour, substitutions of flour types, and uses of flour, so I’ve expanded the entry here on flour.  Hopefully this helps answer some questions.  If not, as always, drop us a comment below or email a question.

Firstly, to understand flour, it helps to understand its source, wheat.  There are several varieties of wheat, which I won’t delve into here.  They vary in colour, protein content, and texture.  The seed of which, has three distinct parts: the hull or bran, the endosperm, and the embryo or germ.  In whole wheat flour, the husk of the wheat grain is left on and ground, hence the term whole wheat.  In white flour is it removed, and only the endosperm and embryo are ground.

Inside flour are two important proteins that make baking possible – glutenin and gliadin.  When these are kneaded together in the presence of water, they interlink and form a network called gluten.  Gluten gives baked goods a chewy/firm texture, and captures the gases released from yeast during fermentation, and the carbon dioxide released from chemical leaveners in baking.

For many baking projects the right type of flour can make all the difference, but how do you know what the right type is? First lets discuss the types of flour, and what they are used for. The four basic types of wheat flour on the market are:

  • All Purpose
  • Cake and Pastry
  • Bread
  • and Self-Raising

Apart from self-raising, which has a chemical leavener (baking powder) already added, the others differ from each other in respect to how much protein is left in during the milling process.

Though there are many different proteins found in flour, the ones that are of concern to bakers are gliadin and glutenin. These proteins form gluten. Gluten is what makes dough elastic.  When making bread you want maximum gluten formation, so the CO2 from the yeast will have a place to stay, but when you’re making say, scones or pie dough, the less gluten the better so the product will not be chewy.

Strong / Hard / Bread Flour

Bread flour has the highest protein content of them all, and though it varies from brand to brand and place to place, the protein content is 12-14%.  It is often made using a type of wheat called Durum.  Due to the high protein content, when worked with water, the most gluten is formed resulting in a chewier product.  Strong flour is typically used for making pasta, bread, and other yeast leavened baked goods.  Strong flour is also the type that should be used when dusting a workbench because of the large particle size.  Unless you are using yeast in your product, or making pasta, consider another type of flour.

All Purpose Flour

Next in strength comes all purpose, which has an 8-10% protein content, putting it basically in the middle of the road when it comes to gluten forming potential.  It is a blend of hard and soft flours.  If you are going to be making a variety of products, but only want to buy one type of flour, this is the one for you.

Cake Flour / Pasty Flour

At the grocery store, you will often see a single product called Cake and Pastry Flour, with generally the lowest protein content of around 7-10%.  Cake and pastry flour has the lowest protein content of all common types of flour, and should be used in making products with a light texture as gluten development is to be avoided.  For example, using a high protein flour will make your cake tough, causing it to not rise when baked.

If you only have bread flour and you want some scones tonight, by all means use it, but be extra aware that the potential for chewy scones is higher with bread flour than cake flour. If you are making bread, and you only have cake flour, you may be in for a little more trouble. Soft bread depends on proper gluten development to trap the gases from the yeast, creating leavening, and therefore a nice soft crumb. With cake flour, there is only about half the protein in bread flour, so the potential for gluten development is lesser.  To get fully developed dough, you may have to knead for so long that the heat from the friction in the bowl kills the yeast, leaving you with a big sticky pile of mess.

Quite a few British recipes call for self-raising flour because in the UK, self raising flour is roughly the same price as regular flour.  For each cup of unleavened flour, add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder. If you only have self-raising flour, and your recipe calls for regular, omit the baking powder and/or salt (if your flour already has it mixed in).

Posted by Victoria at 6:18 pm Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Make washing your doughy hands easier

Baking and Pastry, Breads No Responses »
Jul 102009

When making bread or other yeast products, getting dough on your hands is one of the inevitable consequences.  Theoretically fully developed dough should be considerably less sticky than under-worked dough, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be sticky at all.  Washing your hands will help some, but you’ll be scrubbing under the water for a long time.  The trick is to rub your hands together over a garbage can to get most of it off.  If its too sticky, get a little flour on your hands and keep rubbing.  The flour will dry it up and allow it to ball up ad come off.  The remaining dough will come off with a light hand washing.

Posted by Chris at 1:49 pm Tagged with: , ,

Cutting in fat for perfect pastry

Baking and Pastry No Responses »
Jun 012009

Rubbing butter or another type of fat into flour or dry ingredients is a common first step in many recipes such as pie dough, scones, and cookies.  Under or over mixing the fat can lead to less than perfect results.  For all of these purposes you want to use cold fat.  If flakiness is something that is of the utmost importance, you can even freeze and pre-cut the fat beforehand.

The next step is to cut the cold fat into small chunks — rough 1-2 cm cubes are best.  If you want to be very dedicated, you can chill everything from the flour to the bowl.  Cold hands are best, but working fast will compensate for this if you don’t’ feel like rubbing ice cubes on your wrists until they are painfully cold.  You can cut the fat into the dry ingredients using forks, hands, a pastry cutter (a special tool for just this purpose), or even the paddle on an electric mixer.  What you’re trying to avoid is gluten development which is what makes doughs tough and chewy.

Two things need to be present for gluten development, flour and moisture.  While butter does contain a certain amount of moisture, there is not a sufficient amount to develop gluten.  When mixing, I like using either my hands or an electric mixer as forks are too messy and hard to control, and a pastry cutter is another gadget that only does one thing (Alton Brown’s much hated unitaskers!).  When you mix with your hands, put the cold cubed butter into the bowl, and stir it around gently just to get all the chunks coated in flour.  Now you can start to rub the chunks between your thumb and first 2 fingers.  Don’t rub too much, just enough to break the chunk of fat up.  Any larger pieces can be come back to.

The mixer method is basically the same with a slight difference.  You will need to, after a couple of minutes, turn the mixer off and scrape the bottom to make sure all the flour gets a chance to be coated in fat.

Eventually after enough rubbing or mixing, the mix will change colour becoming more yellow and the texture will become more and more fine.  For items like flaky pie pastry and scones, stop when the fat is still in visible chunks the size of your little fingernail.  For less flaky doughs, continue cutting in the dough until it is the texture of soil or sand.  During baking, the fat will melt trapping the moisture released from the butter or shortening which will leaven the item.

Posted by Victoria at 9:48 pm Tagged with: , ,

Tips for perfect dough rolling

Baking and Pastry No Responses »
May 232009

Learning to work with pastry can be one of the most difficult things in the dessert field, but once you have mastered the basics, your repertoire will increase exponentially.  One of the trickiest things to master can be rolling out the dough.

The best way to ensure that you both have enough dough and don’t have too much scrap is by only making 10-20% more dough than the recipe needs.  This way you will be sure that even after scraps, your dough will be the right thickness for the size it is rolled out to. Example: A recipe calls for 140g of dough to be rolled out, so make about 160g to account for scraps.

Another key to minimizing waste is by considering the shape of the final product.  When rolling for a round pie or tart, the best thing to do is to start with a round piece of dough of an even thickness.  This may mean playing with the dough a little, but as long as you work quickly, and don’t kneed it, it shouldn’t affect the final product.

Starting with your disk, make sure that both the table and the top of the dough are well floured.  Every now and then, make sure that the dough is still lose from the table and well floured underneath, and that the rolling pin isn’t sticking to the top surface.  For round dough, turn the dough often, after every roll or so of the pin, making sure that you’re rolling out the same distance on each roll, and working the dough back into shape lightly with your hands if necessary.  When your dough looks to be roughly the right size, check the size of the pan by placing it on top, making sure to account for the height of the sides.  No matter how carefully you made the pastry, it will still shrink a little in the oven if it’s not chilled first.  Many pie shops freeze the fully assembled raw pies overnight before they are baked to reduce shrinkage.

For a square or rectangle the theory is the same, only you should start with a square or rectangle piece of dough of even thickness and rotate the dough 90º each roll.  As for the thickness, the more even the pressure you rolled with, the more even the dough will be, but you can even it out a little at the end if it’s a little off.  The best way to check if the dough is an even thickness throughout is to run the edges between your fingers, and roll out more where necessary.

It is important to note that if you start out with an irregularly shaped blob of dough, all that you`ll ever end up with is a larger, thinner blob.

Posted by Victoria at 8:24 pm Tagged with: , , ,

Shortbread tips

Baking and Pastry 1 Response »
Nov 212008

Tip 1.  When rolling out the shortbread, or any type of cookie for that matter, to ensure an even thickness across whatever you’re rolling, it’s helpful to have 2 strips (say like an old wooden board) of whatever thickness you want your cookies to be.  Place the boards on either side of the dough and roll onto them.  This will ensure that you get exactaly the same thickeness no matter how many pieces of dough you roll, and that the dough won’t get thinner at the edges where more pressure is applied.  If this is something you make a lot, you can even mark the size of your cookies onto the planks and cut using those guidelines.

2.   If you want to sugar your shortbread.  There are 2 options both with their own pros and cons.  You can lightly brush the surfaces with an egg white and then dust them with sugar.  This method uses the additional materials of an egg white, which if you’re in a commercial setting is no problem, but at home it can be more of a hassle than it’s worth.   So, another method is to dust the cookies with sugar straight after they’ve come out of the oven.  This only coats the top surface, but it doesn’t require any extra materials.

Posted by Victoria at 11:18 pm Tagged with: , , , ,
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