Dough Folding

Hello everyone!
This article that will talk about a well known method every sourdough baker practice: Folding the dough.
Also known as s&f (stretch and fold) I prefer to call this important step just dough folding.

Now, let' s see why this passage is important in baking and even more in sourdough baking.

When we mix a dough, we always want to look for its final temperature, as well as its strenght and level of gluten development (where strenght is the relation between elasticity and extensibility, not absolute strenght).
We all know that those are important parameters to control (have a look to previous articles if you missed something).

Well, folding the dough affects those parameters quite a lot. Let' s see why:

Temperature:


When a dough is mixed, it's then stored in a food grade container, (usually plastic), which have a volume 3 to 4 times bigger than the dough itself. This is called bulk phase.
As the word says, the dough is here stored in big quantity to be able to develope the wanted charactheristics of flavour, strenght and volume.
Because most of the time we store the dough at a different Temperature from the room, doing folds during the bulk stage allows to create a uniform grade of T in the dough.
In a very close relationship with this, folding helps also to distribute gases and bacterias, scattering them through the dough.
This is also very helpfull to the fermentation.


Strenght:


Really important dough feature, it will estabilish how to process the dough in the shaping and proofing phase.
Meanwhile with commercial yeast, is hard to have to augment a dough strenght because the amount of gases produced by yeast during the proofing phase garantee a dough strenghtening; In sourdough baking is much more useful (and even more with high hydration doughs) because less gases are produced during fermentation stage.
Applying a number of fold/s during the bulk stage, at regular intervals, will give strenght to a dough.
Those foldings should be gentler as they are performed towards the end of this phase, to avoid gases loss (that will generate a loss of volume and flavours).
I will give a few but great tips for folding in the "secret" section next on!



Gluten development:


Very related to dough strenght (but not the only cause, gluten development is also a key element. It will state the dough capacity to retain gases and so, to augment volume during the proofing and cooking phase.
While folding our dough, gluten strands are gently stretched, and they create a more regular net to trap the gases.
The more foldings we do, the more regular and tight will be the gluten net, and therefore the crumb structure.

Understanding the flour

A balanced dough on the bench waiting  for scaling 

...

Autumn came, with the first snow and made everything quiter. The forest is getting coated by those beautiful colors, which every year amaze me. So beautiful is nature!

I got a beautiful smelling cup of grey tea with honey, so I can start write this piece.

...

Sometimes we want to replicate a bread recipe, or we want to try a well known one but using a new kind of flour and the result isn' t as expected. Maybe the dough comes out too stiff (in which case is easier to correct) or maybe it comes out almost batter-like. 

Altough can be many the factors that lead to a not-so-good result while execute a bread recipe, a missread of the flour used can be the most recurring (and most of the time a problem for the inexperienced baker).

Without writing down a copy of the many existant technical guides to flour's rheology; I want to share my personal opinion learnt throught the experience.

When a proper balance is estabilished within flour and other ingredients, also the shaped dough will be balanced. 

But, before that, I ll try to resume in a few words the most important flour carachteristics involved into the baking process.

1.Quality of proteins and level in percentage:

Two distinct aspects which are very important. I should say the most interesting of the two is proteins quality; When they are good, we can expect a nice development of the gluten net. 

Even if the proteins are low, but of a good kind, we are able to make a nice bread dough without many problems.

On the other hand, we can expect less water absorbtion.

Assuming we have the same protein quality, the flour which will have a higher percentage, will develope a stronger gluten net and will absporb more water.

2.Elasticity and extensibility of the gluten strands:

It' s strictly related to the proteins quality (another time we can see that the quality is very important).

A flour can produce gluten which is really elastic and not extensible as well as the opposite or a blend of the two characteristics in different rapport.

When we have a good protein quality, we will have a balanced rapport between elasticity and extensibility, making the dough easy to work with.

My opinion is that when we try a new flour, (in a empyric way, without having flour sheets) we have to carefully "read" it. 

The way it mix with water, how much liquid can absorb without a proper mixing, if when stretched we feel stiffness or a lack of resistance...

All of those little things we should feel and be able to understand. 

With this kind of knowledge, we will be able to decide if more water is needed (or maybe less water then the original recipe); If a fold or more are needed, which will be the amount of bulk fermentation time required and so on...

This is just a guideline, there are so many variables that it' s not possible to mention every possible scenery. 

However, I hope that I will give something to you to think about next time you mix a new dough.

Sincerly, 

Matteo

About Bread Flavor

A "Bruschetta".
Even with complex preparations,
some notes of the bread's flavor will be present.

Hello everyone ! I hope everyone is having wonderful bakings :)

Finally, I found some time to write this post. The idea sneaked in my mind since last week but I couldn' t write it down, for a reason or another.
But hey, here we are!

Maybe the most important thing in bread baking, for most people; Flavor, or flavour, taste, is undoubtedly one of the main characteristic we all are conscious of.

To be more clear, think to a person who doesn' t have any bread knowledge.
He, or She, will not notice much of the appearence of the bread, or the differences in texture, but will for sure understand very well the taste. Maybe not all the slight variations or the aftertaste, but the main sensations of sweet, bitter, acidic, I am sure, will be felt.

So, which can be the main flavours in sourdough breads? Just the word sourdough itself can hit your imagination and start wetting your mouth because of the first part: Sour; That is acidity. Acidity force your mouth salivating. And salivating will help to eat that fantastic food we are loving!

Many are the possible levels of acidity in a levain bread. To me the optimal ph of the final product should not be less than 4.0. After that I feel the acidity starts cover other flavors. Of course this is only my humble opinion and there are very good bakers who like more acidic breads.
To be honest, the most important thing for me, is not quantity but the quality of acids in a bread. This is because they will give a very different imprint.

As everyone knows, the main acids produced in sourdough breads are of two kinds:
Lactic acids and Acetic acids. The names alone, tell you which flavor they will produce in breads.
Usually, when producing a certain bread, good bakers tend to choose if the flavor should be lactic or acetic. Therefore they choose or adapt methods that will give the wanted result.

To me one of the most interesting point is that you can have a mix of both, producing some of the most complex flavoured breads (without adding ingredients).
This is the case of some long, retarded maturations in which the two acids will be produced altoghether but in a different percentage.


Which are the other flavors that can charactherize a sourdough bead?
Sweetness and bitterness are always presents.

Much of those tastes balance depends on flour quality, and another part is directly connected with the fermentation method.

Red wheats, in example, have a reddish bran which will give, especially to whole meal flour or high extraction ones, a bitter taste.
Here in Italy we don't have this kind of wheat so it's really uncommon to have bitter flours.

Another consequence of bitterness is when during a fermentation, some byproducts (acids, esters) are produced. They then pass into the final products, and the taste will be affected.
Again, the cooking time/heat will affect the flavour of the bread; Overcooking always lead to a bitter aftertaste or taste depending on the level.

Sweetness, on the counterpart, can be produced by very sweet grains; Such as the grano duro Timillia, Khorasan, some hybrids and so on...
Also I noticed that if a very short fermentation method is used while making the bread, the sweetness will be more noticeable because of less sugars have been processed by microorganisms.

The last, but not less important taste, will be the flavor of the grain itself.
Even if refined flours will end up with little to no grain flavor, the less refined ones will bring the seed charachteristics to your mouth.

In conclusion; I can say being a chef for many years trained my taste sense quite a lot, therefore I always feel when a bread I bake lacks of some particular flavor or have another more persistence or again if an aftertaste is pleasant. The most important thing for me is to try achieve a right balance and complexity of flavor keeping in mind that no one of the main tastes (acetic sourness, sweetness, bitterness, lactic sourness, grain) must be too present or will overwhelm your senses and eclipse other flavours.

Salt, this stranger

Himalayan pink salt

Salt is one of the four ingredients in regular bread baking.
I would say it' s a key ingredient because it gives to doughs different properties.

We will see later which are the most known as well as the unknown ones.
But before of that, we could take a couple minutes to think about Salt.

The mineral which in the medieval times was so precious can be found of many different types: refined, unrefined, fine coarse, gross coarse, crystals or enriched, and so on...

The most common is the white salt either coming from mountain caves/ salted deserts or made by letting evaporate sea water with industrial or artisan methods.

In france (Normandy coast) they extract a grey salt which have less salty taste but great other qualities. The color come from seaweed and other minerals.

Always in France but in the south coast of Camargue, a very special salt is extracted: Le fleur de Sel
It has fine crystals (flowers) which are delicate in taste as well as texture and they dissolve faster in a water solution.

In the Himalayan region, a pink salt is produced. Usually unrefined, is harder but have a gentle taste. It' s a fossil salt and so is very pure.

From hawaii islands comes a black salt which have been naturally enriched by carbon from the vulcanic activity of those isles. Also less refined tend to be heavy in taste but is good for our gut.


However, in bread bakin, we dissolve salt into water and percentages are low (usually from 1,5% to 2,8%) therefore any difference in taste is not really noticed in the final product.
The only exception is iodium enriched salt, which tend to give a bitter note to the breads.
For this reason I can suggest to not use it.


The most obvious aspect of adding salt to the dough is for the taste. Salt gives to breads that well rounded taste which is impossible to obtain without this mineral.
But, there are other improvements that salt can give to a dough; More on the technological aspect:

1.It affects fermentation. Since the dawn of the cook, salt have been used to preserve aliments from bacterias and natural decomposition (which starts with a fermentation). Then it' s not surprising if salt can slow down fer,mentation in doughs too. Of course you need a lot of salt to compromise a fermentation, but it will be slowed down for sure.

2.It affects rheologycal properties of gluten and so of doughs. Salt help to bond proteins with water strenghtening bounds as well as giving rigidity to the gluten's structure.


I always look for unrefined salts for baking since they tend to be more natural as well as they dissolve in water less rapidly. Which kind I would use every time is just a matter of personal preference as well as disponibility at the moment.