Book of American Baking / A Practical Guide Covering Various Branches of the Baking Industry, Including Cakes, Buns, and Pastry, Bread Making, Pie Baking, Etc.

by Various

Why Are Shortenings Used?

Shortenings are used in bread-making to accomplish certain definite results, the most common being: first, the coating of each little cell in the loaf whereby the moisture is retained in the loaf, preventing its escape exactly in the manner that waxed or oiled paper would prevent the escape of moisture from a loaf around which it was wrapped. Cut a good loaf after it has been baked about twelve hours, examine it in full daylight, and notice the sheen reflected from each rounded cell. This sheen is greater in loaves which have been properly fermented, using the right proportion of shortening, than in the loaves where the shortening was either deficient in amount or of improper character. Of this matter we will say more further on. Secondly, the use of shortening whitens the bread. Thirdly, a part of the shortening combines with the gluten to make it elastic, and thereby expands more readily and makes a reasonably large loaf. All of these points you can test very readily by making up small batches, using 100 ounces of flour. Take a reasonably good spring wheat patent flour and use 6 pounds 4 ounces of flour, 1½ ounces of yeast, 1½ ounces of salt, 2 ounces of sugar and 3 pounds 12 ounces of water, taking the water at such a temperature so that you will have the dough at 84. Make up the dough and place it in a wooden pail, previously oiled, then cover the dough. At the end of two hours take the dough out and fold it over two or three times. At the end of three hours do the same thing again; again at three and one-half hours. See that dough temperature is maintained as near 84 as possible. At four hours scale it off into sizes for your pan, and prove about sixty minutes in a proving chamber having a temperature of 90.

So far I have said nothing about the quantity of oil to be used. This is because I want you to realize what an influence the amount of shortening has on dough and its expansion. In one dough of the size given above use 1 ounce of oil; in another use 2 ounces; in the third use 3 ounces. Add the oil to the sugar and salt, rub down smoothly until it is a creamy mass; then add a little of the water and a little of the flour and rub down again. Do this with each of the doughs so that the oil will be uniformly mixed in the dough. You will note that the texture of the loaf containing the least amount of shortening is broken. The loaf will not really stand the amount of proof that is given to it, because the gluten will not stretch sufficiently to hold in the gas. The loaf containing the 2 ounces of shortening will be improved very much, and the one containing the 3 ounces will not only be improved in texture and appearance, but will retain the moisture very much longer, as you will find, if you will put a loaf from each of the doughs aside for two days, weighing before and after standing.