Bread Matters (10 page)

Volume

It often seems that the only measure of flour quality that counts is loaf volume. In addition to the remarks about flavour above, I would point out that there is an inverse correlation between volume and nutritional value. The more white flour there is in a dough, the more gluten and hence the bigger the aggregate volume of all the fermentation gases trapped in the dough structure. The bran layers and the wheat germ, where almost all the minerals and micronutrients reside, are not capable of holding gas: they act as a dead weight which must be ‘carried’ by the gluten structure. So any dough with an appreciable amount of bran and germ (e.g. made with a flour of 85 per cent extraction or higher) cannot be expected to expand to the volume of its all-white counterpart. The same applies to dough enriched with other ingredients such as seeds, nuts, fruits, vegetables and spices: all will tend to depress loaf volume. But so what? Let’s have a little less stress on structural engineering and a little more on flavour and nutrition. Bread is food, after all.

Bread machine mixes

Not so long ago, the market for home-baking flours was in steep decline. Then came automatic breadmakers and an opportunity for mills to ‘add value’ by presenting what they had formerly sold as ‘flour’ as ‘bread machine mix’. Sometimes it is just a matter of new packaging, but the mixes may include some additional ingredients. Things such as nuts and seeds are obvious and will be easily visible. But ‘improving’ additives, such as vitamin C and alpha-amylase enzymes, may be there too – presumably to help ensure that the machine produces a perfect result every time, ‘untouched by human hand’, as they used to say. Many big mills routinely add amylase to the flours they supply to bakeries. It is an enzyme that occurs naturally in wheat and its role in breadmaking is to convert starch granules into maltose, which can then be fermented by baker’s yeast to produce the carbon dioxide gas that expands the dough. Some wheats do not have enough natural alpha-amylase and so the miller adds extra; most commercial amylases are now derived by genetic engineering from fungi such as
Aspergillus oryzae.

The presence of additives, hidden or declared, in mixes for bread machines may not be to everyone’s liking. The idea that this way of making bread requires a special mix suggests just another attempt to create a dependent consumer – whereas surely the whole point of making your own bread is to enjoy some independence from the increasingly monolithic food system. Those who share this view can be reassured that it is perfectly possible to make good bread in a bread machine using ordinary flour, yeast, salt and water.

Other flours and grains

Rye

Of the other flours of interest to bakers, rye is probably the most important. Once widely grown in Britain, its use declined from the seventeenth century as agricultural improvements made wheat growing easier and the public love affair with white wheat bread took hold. Rye prospers in poorer soils and colder climates than wheat and is still widely grown in northeastern Europe and northern Russia. With the recent emergence of wheat intolerances, rye bread has gained some popularity in the UK but it is still very much a minority taste. Rye flour does contain gluten, so it is unsuitable for people with coeliac disease, but there is less of it than in wheat flour. Rye gluten can trap fermentation gases but it is much weaker than wheat gluten, so pure rye bread will not rise so much. Rye is rich in pentosans, components of non-starch polysaccharides or dietary fibre; they are mainly soluble and have a blood-cholesterol-lowering effect.

From the baker’s point of view, pentosans contribute to rye flour’s ability to absorb a great deal of water. Indeed, a pure rye dough must be made wet or the resulting bread will be like concrete. Rye flour is alkaline and bland-tasting, so if you use it to make ordinary bread you are likely to get an insipid brick. This is why rye and sourdough are so often linked. Sourdough – a spontaneous fermentation of yeasts and bacteria found in the flour itself, which produces lactic and acetic acids – is essential for rye bread because:

• It creates flavour from a bland flour.
  
• The acids counteract excessive enzyme activity in the dough, which can make it collapse during baking.
  
• Acidity in the baked loaf helps it to keep for longer.
  

The acid flavour of sourdough rye bread can be a bit of a shock to the English palate, but it grows on you. It is an essential accompaniment to strong flavours, such as smoked fish or ripe cheese.

Barley

‘For ten-o’clocks we’d have barley bannocks and a piece of Willimer Whang [a hard cheese from West Cumberland],’ according to William Dodd, a farmer and local historian from Ousby Row, a couple of miles from my bakery in Melmerby. Cumberland baking was full of sweet recipes using the sugar, spices, ginger and rum that came in through the ports of Whitehaven and Maryport, the third leg of the triangular trade taking British goods to Africa and slaves to the West Indies. William Dodd’s bannocks may have been made with pure barley flour, but probably included a little wheat to hold them together.

Barley was widely used for bread in the northern uplands, where poorer soils and a damp climate made wheat difficult to grow. Now it is almost exclusively used in brewing – understandable on account of its very low gluten content, but a pity from the nutritional point of view. Recent research has highlighted the fact that barley has good quantities of vitamin E and high levels of soluble fibre (beta glucans), which may have a cholesterol-lowering potential similar to oats (see below).

Barley flour can be added to a wheat dough at up to 30 per cent of the total flour weight without major changes in dough quality. When baked, it has a pronounced sweetness and a suggestion of maltiness. This effect can be multiplied if the barley flour is cooked with some water before being added to the dough: gelatinisation triggers the enzymic conversion of starch to maltose (as indeed it does with all flours). I learned this from the recipe for Tibetan barley bread in my first baking guide, the inimitable
Tassajara Bread Book
by Edward Espe Brown (Shambala Publications, 1970).

The advantages of barley flour to the home baker are that:

• It is suitable for a wheat-free diet.
  
• It adds a sweet, slightly malty flavour to bread.
  
• It is digestible and nutritious.
  

Oats

The gluten status of oats is still a matter of some controversy. Although the quantity of gluten in oats was always known to be small, they were traditionally off-limits to coeliacs (people with a serious gluten intolerance). Then several studies, particularly in Finland, showed that oats could be tolerated without harm by most coeliac adults and children. However, there is not complete unanimity in the scientific community and the current position of the UK Coeliac Society is that ‘moderate amounts of oats may be consumed by most coeliacs without risk’, but that severe coeliacs should avoid them
²
.

One further reason for coeliacs being suspicious of oats is that they are often processed in factories that also handle wheat and may be inadvertently cross-contaminated.

Nutritionally, oats are unquestionably a valuable cereal and therefore a good addition to mixed grain breads. Lacking any effective gluten, they will contribute to flavour and texture but not to volume or aeration. However, the high natural oil content of oats can contribute to a softening of the crumb. An addition of less than 10 per cent oat flour or meal can give an impression of extra lightness even if, objectively, the loaf volume remains pretty much the same. Oat fibre, or oat bran, is available in some wholefood shops and can be used in the dough or for dipping or dusting the whole loaf. Similarly, oat flakes (preferably rolled oats or ‘jumbo’ oats, which have been less processed than porridge oats) make a striking addition to the dough; if used to decorate the crust, they benefit from being exposed to a toasting effect, which really brings out their flavour.

Spelt

One of the ‘covered’ wheats – i.e. those whose husk does not fall off during threshing – spelt is the best-known ‘alternative’ source of flour, particularly for people who feel they cannot tolerate standard wheat. Science does not support the theory that spelt is ‘better’ because it is an ancient precursor of wheat, untainted by intensive plant breeding. However, there is no doubt that many people find spelt easier to digest and this is surely reason enough to give it a try. It is generally higher in protein than common wheat, with the proviso that protein levels for all types of wheat are dependent on cropping conditions.

Spelt flour is available usually as wholemeal, though a white version is now beginning to appear. It looks and performs much like ordinary wheat flour, though it tends to have a slightly weaker gluten than the strongest breadmaking wheats. It can have a bitter aftertaste, which may be simply a consequence of oxidation in flour that has been stored for too long. Wholemeal spelt has lively populations of natural yeasts and bacteria and produces a vigorous sourdough culture in a shorter time than ordinary wheat flour.

Kamut

Considered to be an ancient relative of durum wheat, Kamut is the registered tradename for a cereal derived from 36 grains, mailed by an American airman in Egypt to his father in Montana in the 1950s. Its production is always organic and is controlled by the Quinn family. Kamut is generally higher in protein than wheat but with poorer-quality gluten. Like spelt, it can often be tolerated by people with sensitivities to modern wheats, lending support to the proposition that plant breeders, in their striving to improve yield and gluten quality, have overlooked nutritional quality and palatability.

Einkorn and emmer

These two ancient precursors of wheat seem to be enjoying something of a revival, particularly in Germany. If you get the chance, you may be interested to try making bread with grains that are not very different from those eaten by our Paleolithic ancestors as long as 18,000 years ago
³
. Einkorn is the older one, and there is some evidence that it is not toxic to people with coeliac disease. Emmer became the dominant wheat throughout the Near and Far East, Europe and North Africa from 10,000 to 4,000 BC, when the ‘naked’ wheats (i.e. those in which the husk separates from the kernel during threshing) began to take over. Emmer remains an important crop in Ethiopia and some is grown in India and Italy. Both einkorn and emmer are significantly higher in overall protein than modern wheat and have a good flavour. They have a slightly sticky gluten and produce loaves of smaller volume than modern flours.

Grains and flours suitable for gluten-free baking are discussed in Chapter 12.

Water

For most practical purposes, any normal mains water supply will be fine for baking, with no perceptible differences between hard and soft water areas. At the extremes, very hard (alkaline, with a high calcium content) water may tend to reduce the rate of yeast fermentation and tighten the gluten in a dough, whereas very soft water may produce a stickier result. But unless you move between areas with widely differing water types, you will probably not notice any particular effect – or rather you will get used to working with what you have got. The one exception to this is in the production of natural leavens and sourdoughs. Some domestic supplies are quite heavily chlorinated and, since chlorine kills almost all bacteria (that’s why it’s there), it is advisable to filter your mains water or use still spring water from bottles, particularly in the early stages of starting a natural fermentation. Leaving mains water in a bucket or jug overnight removes most of the chlorine.

Yeast

Yeast is what makes dough rise. By feeding on simple sugars obtained from the flour, it produces carbon dioxide (CO
₂
) gas and alcohol. The gas inflates whatever gluten network has developed in the dough; most of the alcohol is evaporated at the baking stage. Baker’s yeast is the term used to describe industrially produced, highly concentrated sources of yeast, which are supplied either liquid (for large bakeries), fresh or dried in various forms. Leavens or sourdoughs are cultures of naturally occurring yeasts and lactobacilli. They are dealt with in more detail in Chapter 7.

Yeast is a single-celled micro-organism belonging to the fungi family. It has a porous skin through which materials dissolved into small molecules pass to ‘feed’ the organism. The yeast cell releases 14 different enzymes, which help break down carbohydrates into forms that are accessible. Yeast reproduces by ‘budding’, or dividing into identical cells. If it becomes dry, it forms spores, which can last in the environment for a long time.

There are hundreds of genera, species and strains of yeast. Baker’s yeast is
Saccharomyces cerevisiae;
the species
S. exiguus
is often found in acid leavens or sourdoughs.
Candida
is another genus of yeast. It gets a bad press through its species
C. albicans,
which, though present and harmless in up to 50 per cent of humans, can in some people produce strains that are pathogenic and cause harmful irritation of the gut and other membranes. However,
C. milleri
is one of the commonest ‘wild’ yeasts present in natural fermentations; it has a pronounced ability to live in stable association with the lactobacilli that are the other crucial component of sourdoughs
⁴
.

Fermentation and reproduction are not the same thing. Yeast fermentation can take place in the absence of oxygen, hence Louis Pasteur’s remark that ‘fermentation is life without air’. The presence of oxygen inhibits fermentation but increases yeast reproduction. This is why yeast manufacturers blow large amounts of air through their fermenters, reducing fermentation, which generates unwanted CO
₂
, and encouraging the yeast to reproduce itself. In fast-made bread, there is no time for yeast reproduction to take place, which explains why much larger initial quantities are required to produce sufficient gas to expand the dough. In long fermentations, however, such as an overnight sponge (see page 126), a relatively small amount of initial yeast will reproduce itself until there are enough cells to provide the fermentative activity that aerates the dough during the final proof stage.