The Science of breadmaking
By: Omkar Hande
Tags: Food Science, Gluten, Bread, Baking, Science

Breadmaking can be hard and a little non-intuitive. Especially so, if you live in India because this is not something we do in our kitchens every day. Some may call it art but it’s a very straightforward process. It’s no less than a science experiment really. You are going to grow fungus in your own kitchen after all!

In this article, we will attempt explaining the process of breadmaking from a scientific perspective so that you really understand what you’re doing. We feel understanding this process at the fundamental level makes you less prone to error and enables you to become much more experimentative, instead of following a rigid step-by-step recipe. There is no fixed “secret” recipe for making bread. Recipes must change with places and ingredients.

Despite scientifically understanding what goes on in the development, making bread by yourself at home surely requires patience and can be quite a physical challenge. The end product, however, is very rewarding — We guarantee! There’s nothing that matches the smell of fresh bread wafting through your kitchen. However, let us give you some more reasons to learn the process. Skip to Step-1 if you’re already convinced!

Why learn to make bread?

There are advantages if you know how to make bread. You can be a “bread-purist” and start baking bread at home just for the love of enjoying a fresh homemade loaf, but you should know that mastering the technique of making a basic bread can enable you to cook so many things. It opens doors to tons of dishes that you’d have never thought of making at home. Here’s a small list:

Pizza — Need we say more? If you’ve tried making pizza at home with a store-bought base, you will never go back to it once you make the base yourself! Remember, half the taste of a good pizza is in the quality of the base. In fact, getting the right dough is the only difficult part of making a good Pizza. Rest is you going wild with the toppings. More on this later, in a dedicated pizza post.

— Need we say more? If you’ve tried making pizza at home with a store-bought base, you will never go back to it once you make the base yourself! Remember, half the taste of a good pizza is in the quality of the base. In fact, getting the right dough is the only difficult part of making a good Pizza. Rest is you going wild with the toppings. More on this later, in a dedicated pizza post. Tandoori Rotis, Naans — So you say have a bread dough ready? Then you can make any item from that “Indian Bread” section that you see in the restaurant menus! We will cover this in another post in detail.

— So you say have a bread dough ready? Then you can make item from that “Indian Bread” section that you see in the restaurant menus! We will cover this in another post in detail. Garlic bread — This is our favorite. It is so simple to make. All it needs is butter and garlic with fresh dough.

… and many more dishes, but we hope this was enough to compel you to start. Let’s go through the basic steps of bread making. Remember, all throughout the process, patience and practice are key.

Please Note

All the steps have been divided into #ChefMode and #GeekMode for cooking instructions and scientific comments respectively

Step 1 — Growing the Yeast

#ChefMode 👨‍🍳

Yeast gives life to the bread — literally. This is how the bread becomes fluffy.

Start by taking a cup of lukewarm water. Remember, it should not have a burning tinge. If the water is too hot, you will kill the yeast. If its too cold, your yeast is not going to come to life. To this, add a teaspoon of sugar and dissolve it. Add 2 teaspoons of yeast to this. Now, wait for the magic.

Yeast Growth, Image by Omkar Hande

You should see a nice layer of froth in about 5–10 min depending on how warm the weather is. It should somewhat resemble the image below.

Fully activated yeast, Image by Omkar Hande

Your basic starter is ready. We can now proceed to make the dough.

#GeekMode 👨‍🔬

Phases of yeast development, Image by Omkar Hande

Yeast is a Fungi, which like every microorganism, multiplies under favorable conditions. Favorable conditions for yeast include 3 things majorly — warm temperature, water, and glucose. In this step, we’ve provided all 3 to it — in the form of warm temperature of the water, the water as a medium itself and the sugar (glucose) which provides food for the yeast. The yeast starts multiplying first and then starts performing anaerobic respiration. This releases carbon dioxide — the gas that makes up the froth.

Step 2 — Kneading the dough

#ChefMode 👨‍🍳

This step is pure hard work. If you’re kneading for the first time, be patient with the dough initially as it’s going to stick a lot to your fingers. Get ready for 8–10 minutes of an arm workout.

Take the mixture from Step 1 and add 1 tsp of salt to it. Add 1.5–2 cups of white flour (Maida) to this mixture — little by little, not all at once. Take a spatula and start folding in the flour. Once the dough is hard enough or rather difficult to handle with a spatula, take it out of the bowl on your kitchen surface and start kneading. This kneading is no different from what we do with “atta” for Rotis in India. We are aiming for a dough that is slightly softer than roti atta dough.

Kneading is going to allow us to make our bread to develop both strength and stretchiness. Remember the more you knead, the more stretchy the bread will become. However, about 8 minutes of kneading should be enough. Believe us, it’s going to feel much longer than 8 minutes when you do it!

The following pictures should help you on how to knead the dough