Understanding the flour

A balanced dough on the bench waiting  for scaling 

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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.

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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

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.