Breaking the Dough.
When the dough is ready remove it from the trough or bowl and put it on the bench or table; then cut it into pieces weighing about 10 pounds; then pat it down with both hands, then take up one end of the dough and lap it over the other, then pat it down again until you have the piece of dough very flat; then fold it over and over. Continue to pat down and fold over the dough until it is very compact, then take up the next piece, and so on, until you have the entire batch of dough firm and compact. In some large shops this work is done by machines called “dough breaks.”
“Breaking” is done to free the dough from excessive gas and to keep the dough young and also to produce a firm loaf of bread. If the dough is “made up” before it has been freed from excessive gas, it will produce a spongy loaf of bread, with large, irregular holes in it. Such a loaf of bread will dry out very quickly. After the dough has been freed from excessive gas it becomes firm and compact, and the loaves of bread made from this dough will likewise be firm and compact. (At this period of the dough all gas contained in the dough can be classed as “excessive,” because it is of no real value, but rather a hindrance, because it makes additional work to get the dough into proper shape for making it up into loaves.) Now, when the yeast again becomes active and gas begins to form, the loaf will raise evenly, because what gas remains in the loaf is evenly distributed throughout the loaf, thus producing a nicely shaped loaf.
The fifth process in the art of bread making is weighing.