Bread Knowledge
From a useful breadmaking class.
Acidity: Yeast loves acid. It grows well in acidic environments, and it actually creates acidic environments through its fermentation process. But once the environment becomes too acidic, the yeast dies and your bread dies. That is why you don't let it rise for too long. Also, if you add in acidic ingredients like onions or fruit juice, this will cause for problems with the bread going flat from the yeast dying.
Kneading: The baker told us to treat the dough like it's a living organism. So we must treat it gently. When stirring the ingredients, don't cut through it with your spoon. Instead scoop the ingredients together and they will form dough on their own. When kneading, don't push and pull so hard that the dough tears. Be gentle with it. That's the best way to get soft dough with big bubbles. After gently kneading for a few minutes (adding in flour as necessary), the dough will start to resist, no longer absorbing flour, and physically fighting back against your hands. It will also take on a sort of luster or sheen, and that's when you know it's time to let it rest and rise.
Sugar: Putting sugar in your dough is what causes the bread to come out browner. More sugar = browner, and sweeter sugar = browner. So ½ cup of honey will make a browner bread than ½ cup of cane sugar, because honey is much sweeter than cane sugar. The baker said that he only usually only uses a small amount of sugar to get the yeast going.
Salt and Sugar: Sugar and salt in the recipe need to be inversely proportionate. If you use more sugar, you need to use less salt. If you use less sugar, you need to use more salt.
Salt: Salt retards the ability of the yeast to ferment, so it's important to control how much salt you use, and/or when you add it to the dough.
Rising: You know it's risen enough if you poke it and the hole from your finger stays in the dough.
Fat: Fat is put in the bread for the sake of texture, not so much for flavor.
Interesting Historical Fact: In the middle ages, white flour was made by sifting and grinding the wheat over and over again. This means that it still retained most of its nutrients, and was basically just as nutritious as the darker flours. That's different from the white flour of today, which is chemically bleached, which destroys the natural nutrients in the wheat, so that vitamins and such are artificially added back into the flour.
Bread flour and all-purpose flour contain a good amount of gluten for making bread. Pastry flour and flour made from different grains, have less or no gluten, so they don't have the strength to stretch and hold the air, so they are not good for making yeast bread. They can be treated as add-ins for flavor, not used to create the structure of the bread.
The sponge method of making bread:
This is a method, not a recipe, so go find a recipe and use this method for it.
Start the yeast in a bit of water with a bit of sugar or flour. Mix together the water, sugar, half the flour, and the yeast mixture after it's become all foamy.
Let this rest for a long time. Overnight in a cold environment or a few hours in a warm environment. It needs to become rather large and blobby and sticky and bubbly.
After it's rested, add in the salt, oil/butter, and more flour. Stir it gently, not cutting through the dough, but bringing the flour down the sides and underneath with your spoon, like scooping it together. When it's mostly together, turn out to a floured board and knead more flour in until it's ready.
Let rise twice, once as a blob (oiled, in an oiled and covered bowl), and once in loaf form. These loaves don't take as long to bake because they're more airy, more like ½ hour.
Any desired additional ingredients, like fruit, vegetables, herbs, seeds, whole grains, cheese, etc, can be added. They can be added either at the beginning, when making the sponge, or later when you add the rest of the ingredients. Any acidic ingredients should be added at the later point, and any dried/dehydrated ingredients should be soaked in water before going into the dough, so they don't mess up the dough's hydration level.