Dr. Strangeloaf - Recap

Alton explains the wonders of bread, perhaps the ultimate comfort food. Bread is little more than flour, water, air and a little salt and yeast. Although many breads feature other ingredients these come and go at the whim of the baker. Yet like a lot of simple things, making bread properly takes the right ingredients and the right techniques.

Bread rises because of gluten, a mixture of proteins and starch that trap fermentation gasses. Without gluten leavened breads are impossible. Alton first investigates high protein flour, made from “hard” wheat. This kind of flour yields poor baked goods but excellent breads.

The right kind of water is important too. Alton recommends mineral water or filtered water. The chlorine municipalities use to purify their tap water can kill the yeast necessary for fermentation and rising.

Yeasts consume sugar and produce carbon dioxide and other waste products in the process of fermentation. The carbon dioxide creates the bubbles in the dough. Alton demonstrates three varieties of yeast:

• A yeast starter is a colony from which a quantity of microorganisms may be taken. With the right care the colony will reproduce and replenish what the cook uses.
  
• Active dry yeast has been dried and divided into small grains. The surface of he grain is mostly inert yeast cells but the core contains active cells.
  
• Quick rising yeast contains more live organisms because it is prepared in a way that kills fewer of the cells.
  

To encourage rising, Alton pre-ferments his dough. He mixes a small quantity of flour with honey, water and yeast and stashes that in the chill chest overnight (eight to twelve hours). This gives the yeast a kind of head start.

Alton measures flour for bread by weight. As he’s previously demonstrated, flour is compressible. The same weight of flour can occupy different volumes. He adds flour, a little more yeast and salt to the bowl of his stand mixer, then the prefermented mixture. With the dough hook, he kneads that for a few minutes until it just comes together, then lets it rest for about twenty minutes. This ensures that each grain of flour is properly moisturized. After the dough rests Alton kneads it until he can pull it into thin sheets.

Now the dough must rise. Alton sets a pan full of hot water into the oven and puts the dough ball into a straight sided greased container, then puts the container into the oven for an hour or two, until it doubles in volume.

Alton punches down his risen dough, using a “folding” technique to evenly distribute the bubbles. Then he rolls it gently around and puts it on a sheet pan dusted with cornmeal to rise again. This second rising, where the dough is in the shape of the loaf, is called bench proofing.

Alton intends to bake his bread on terra cotta. This material is heat sensitive, so he puts the pan into the oven so that it can preheat slowly, with the oven, to a temperature of 400º. Alton next brushes his dough with a mixture of cornstarch and water that will give it a golden and crispy crust. Then he slashes the top a few times to allow for expansion.

Alton judges doneness by temperature. He uses an instant read thermometer to check for an internal temperature around 210º. It will take this loaf about a hour to bake to that temperature. Once the bread is done, Alton leaves it to cool for thirty minutes before attempting to cut it. Cutting too soon (before the structural proteins have set) just mashes the bread.

With a few basic ingredients and techniques and some attention to detail, Alton claims, anyone can make bread as good as that produced by any specialty bakery.

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