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

VARIATIONS IN BREAD TEXTURE
BY C. MILLER

That there is a wide variance in texture or grain in bread from day to day, or from batch to batch, produced under seemingly same conditions, is not to be denied. There are several causes, any one of which may produce the difference between good and poor texture:

(1) Improper fermentation, the most fruitful source.

(2) Improper handling or preparation of the dough previous to panning.

(3) Over-proofing before baking.

(4) Ovens too hot or too cold.

By taking up these causes in the order named I hope to point out to those who are not practical some of the difficulties which confront the operative baker, and which make the production of uniform texture in bread almost as difficult at it would be to bail the water out of Lake Michigan with a bucket.

My observation, covering a period of more than thirty years, leads me to believe that absolutely uniform texture or grain in bread will never be produced so long as we make bread with yeast. This brings me to the first cause named, that of fermentation.

As there are no known mechanical means of determining the amount or degree of fermentation in dough, this must be left to the judgment of the baker, and his judgment is prone to err. If the dough is under-fermented the resultant texture of the bread will most likely be rough, waxy and heavy to the eye and touch. If the dough be over-fermented, the texture takes on a grayish look and feels coarse and dry and inclines to crumble. The difference in time between under and over-fermentation is not long, and, as previously stated, depends entirely upon the judgment of the operative baker, and were his judgment infallible, which it is not, other conditions in the bakery many times make it impossible for him to take the dough at the proper period of fermentation, due to the erratic and eccentric nature of fermentation of the various batches under course of manufacture. Although made apparently identical, in which every ingredient, including the water, has been carefully weighed, the revolutions of the mixing machine counted, to produce as near as possible one dough like the other, these doughs, all of a temperature not to vary more than half of a degree, and this temperature controlled in a room specially constructed for this purpose—with all of this care and fidelity to detail, it is seldom that any two doughs will ferment exactly alike. That being so, what may be expected where such facilities are lacking, and where such close attention to detail is not practiced? The subject of fermentation is a long one, and I only touch upon it as it relates to the texture or grain of baked bread, pointing out the difficulty of its control outside of the laboratory.

Taking up the second cause of poor texture (in the order named), that of improper handling of the dough before panning, I may say it is impossible to make bread of a fine texture or grain without a certain amount of manipulation of the dough during the process of fermentation. This has been termed by the baker “cutting over” or “turning back.” If this part of the work is not properly done there will be a consequent sacrifice of texture or grain. This cutting over, when properly done, consists of cutting the dough in pieces as large as can be conveniently handled, and stretching these pieces as long as possible and placing the same again in the trough, one piece on top of the other, until the entire batch has been so treated. This serves two purposes: (1) That of again bringing the dough, which had become warmer in the center of the batch, to a uniform temperature throughout; (2) it makes a more thorough distribution of the air cells which were produced by the gases in their attempt to escape by rising upward through the mass of dough. It is this repeated redistribution of the air cells to finer size and greater number which aids materially in the production of a bread of fine texture. This can best be illustrated by calling your attention to the “snow-flake” bread, or brake dough, which was once quite popular in many sections of this country. The process of manufacture, in which the dough was run through iron rollers from twenty to thirty times, always folding and running through the rollers again and again, is an intensified redistribution of the air cells, and this process produces a texture or grain very fine and pleasing to the eye and touch.