TYPES OF YEAST DOUGH

-There are three types of yeast available.

Cake or Compressed Yeast

This is an early form of domesticated yeast developed in the 19th century that was especially suited for
bread rather than beer. Cake yeast can still be found in some grocery stores. Some people feel it
produces the breads with the best flavor.
Compressed cake yeast will keep in the freezer for a few months; defrost in the refrigerator before using.
One cake of compressed yeast weighs slightly more than 1/2 ounce, and it can be used instead of 1 scant
tablespoon or 1 packet of active dry yeast.

Active Dry Yeast

This is the most common form of yeast available. It has all the moisture removed so it can be kept for
several months at room temperature or in the refrigerator; indefinitely in the freezer. Dry yeast becomes
active when it is dissolved in liquid that contains a bit of sugar and flour.
One packet of active dry yeast is equivalent to 1 scant tablespoon of bulk active dry yeast or 1 cake of
compressed yeast.

Quick-Rising Yeast
This is a higher protein strain of yeast that has been recently developed. Just like other dry yeast, it can
be stored for a long time if kept cool and dry. It is blended with the other ingredients in the recipe and
activated with very hot (125 to 130F) water. This eliminates the proofing process where the yeast is
activated by dissolving it in warm water. In addition, the rising process is speedier because the initial
temperatures are warmer due to the very hot water.
One packet of quick-rising yeast can be used in place of 1 packet of active dry yeast. Keep in mind that
bread flavor develops under a long leavening period; this may not be the best choice of yeasts since it
speeds up the rising process.

*There are two basic yeast doughs, batter and kneaded.

Batter breads are really a shortcut way to make breads - they require no kneading.
Kneaded breads require more time and energy than batter breads.
*However, both types of yeast dough must rise before shaping a baking; this allows the yeast to
activate.
Batter dough Kneaded dough
The flour is beaten into the dough with an Shape is symmetrical and well-
electric mixer instead of being kneaded. proportioned with a rounded, smooth
Batter dough is stickier because less flour is top.
used. Color of crust is an even goleden
The batter is spread in a pan instead of brown, slightly darker on top than on
shaped into loaves or rolls. sides and bottom.
There is usually only one rising time. Crust is tender, smooth, crisp, and free
Batter dough results in breads with a from cracks.
coarser texture and pebbled surface. Size is large but not airy in proportion
to weight.
Inside color is creamy white and free
from streaks.
Texture is tender, soflt, slightly moist,
 not crumbly or doughy.
Flavor is pleasing with a mild yeast
overtone.

STEPS IN BREAD MAKING

*Step One: Ingredient Selection & Scaling
Using good quality ingredients is crucial to making good bread. When choosing flour for
bread making, look for one labeled as all-purpose flour or as bread flour.

*Step Two: Mixing

There are two stages to the mixing process: the first is to incorporate ingredients, the
second is to develop the structure of the dough, otherwise known as the gluten network. Dough can
be kneaded by hand, or mixed in a tabletop mixer. When using a tabletop mixer, keep it to the lower
speeds to avoid damaging the motor.

*Step Three: Primary Fermentation

Also referred to as rising, or proofing, this is where the yeast starts to do its work,
converting sugars into carbon dioxide, alcohol and organic acids. Every dough has a different
primary fermentation time, depending on its formulation. We work with time as well as our senses
to determine when the dough is properly fermented.

*Step Four: Divide and Pre-Shape

When the dough is properly fermented, it is time to divide it to the desired size and give the
divided pieces a preshape. A preshape is an intermediate shapea loose suggestion to the dough of
where its headed that will make final shaping easier.

*Step Five: Bench Rest

After the dough has been preshaped, it needs to rest for a short time before final shaping.
Bench rest is typically 15-20 minutes long and during that time, the gluten network, which has been
made more elastic through handling, will relax and become more extensible.

*Step Six: Final Shaping

There are four basic shapes in bread making: the baguette (stick), the boule (round), the
ba tard (a football-like shape) and the pan loaf (a blunt-ended ba tard). After shaping, the dough
must be set somewhere to rest during its final fermentation. For baguettes and ba tards, we use
bakers linen and wooden boards; for boules, we often use wooden proofing baskets. The linen and
the baskets help to hold the shape of the dough during the final fermentation.

*Step Seven: Final Fermentation

After shaping, the dough must rest and continue to ferment. The length of the final
fermentation varies from dough to dough; it could be anywhere from 15 minutes to 12 or more
hours. Again, we work with time and with our dough sense to determine when the dough is
properly fermented.

*Step Eight: Scoring

 Most loaves will be scored, or cut, just before they are baked. Scoring has a decorative
function, and it allows the dough to spring properly as the carbon dioxide gas that has
accumulated during fermentation expands in the heat of the oven. Scoring is typically done with a
razor blade or a small serrated blade.

*Step Nine: Baking

Lean doughs (those like baguettes and levain breads made without fats, sugars, eggs, etc.)
are typically baked at a very high temperature, around 450-475F. Enriched breads (brioche,
challah, sweet breads) are typically baked around 350-400F. In most cases, a smaller loaf should
be baked at a higher temperature than a larger one, so that it will take on the right amount of color
in its baking time. There are a few different ways to determine that a loaf is properly bakedby
color, by the hollow sound you hear when you knock on the bottom of the loaf, and by internal
temperature (at least 190F for lean breads, 165F for enriched breads).

*Step Ten: Cooling

Although it is tempting to eat hot bread right of the oven, thats not the best way to really
taste its subtle flavors. When bread first comes out of the oven, it is still filled with excess moisture
and carbon dioxide. The bread needs time to cool so that the moisture and gas will dissipate. After
cooling, the texture, flavor and aroma of the bread will have developed into what they should be and
you will have a flavorful, palate-pleasing loaf.

MIXING METHOD OF DOUGH

The Whipping Method

I think of the whipping method as European and I dont think thats an inaccurate assessment,
since you only tend to come across it when making spongecakes like ge noise, joconde, ladyfingers
or specialty cakes like rehru cken. I cant think of any common uses for the whipping method here in
the States, except perhaps for flourless chocolate cake. Essentially, the whipping method is how
European bakers create very light cake layers in the absence of chemical leaveners.

You need a lot of eggs plus plenty of sugar, which helps create a thick syrup that keeps the egg
foam from collapsing. The neat thing about the whipping method is that it gives lie to the myth that
egg foams can only be created with whites. Twaddle. Indeed in most instances where the whipping
method is employed youre whipping either whole eggs or egg yolks plus sugar. Egg whites plus
sugar are a rarity in the whipping method universe because, well, then youd have a meringue,
would you not?

But I digress. In general sponges made via the whipping method begin with the egg-sugar foam. Any
flavorings (like chocolate) are added next, then the dry ingredients are carefully folded in so as to
preserve the bubbles (I said you can make a foam with egg yolksI didnt say that foam was stable).
Sometimes a meringue is folded in as well to add more volume.

The upside of the whipping method is that it creates sponges that are very light, sweet and eggy-
tasting. The down side is that those sponges can be a little dry tasting, at least by New World
standards. All this begs the question: why use the whipping method at all when perfectly good
chemical leaveners are available? The answer is because egg sponges have a cleaner taste and a
lighter texture. The high proportion of egg can also create very plastic sheets of sponge that are
perfect for rolling into things like yule logs. And anyway, dry cake is what cake syrup is for!

The Roll-In Method

The roll-in method is the description for what you do when you laminate dough for croissants,
Danishes and puff pastry. Effectively youre rolling butter into a flour-and-water dough. Personally
I think of it as folding it in, but there you go. Who am I to argue with decades of established pastry
lingo?
Theres no question that laminating seems more like a technique than a mixing method, though
when you consider that one of the chief aims of mixing is to incorporate fat it all starts to make a
little more sense.
So what does the roll-in method accomplish? By itself its an elegant way to maximize the process of
mechanical leavening, i.e. the raising of a dough via steam power. Lest we forget, a drop of water
transformed into steam occupies something on the order of 1400 times more space. Which makes
confined steam a heck of a leavening engine.
Done well, the roll-in method creates over a thousand ultra-thin, alternating sheets of fat (usually
butter or margarine) and dough. When heated the fat melts, freeing the dough sheets to push apart
from one another through the action of steam.
The question often asked is: where does the water come from? The butter? Yes, though plenty of
water/steam is released from the dough itself. In fact the dough supplies all the water thats needed
for leavening. A wet butter with a high proportion of water can actually harm the process,
dampening the dough sheets and making it harder for them to separate from one another and rise.
This is why experienced laminators favor fats like Euro-style butter, dry butter or margarine
which have little-to-no water, and which create higher rising, crispier products.
How high can laminated doughs rise? Under perfect conditions, up to 7 times their original
thickness. Granted thats far less than the theoretical 1400 times, but then nobodys perfect. Even
under the best circumstances the vast majority of the steam we bakers try to capture escapes.

The Egg Foam Method

The next stop on our Big Five Mixing Methods tour will be the Egg Foam Method. Of all the various
mixing methods out there, the Egg Foam Method has the virtue of being the most direct, the
simplest. For indeed, instead of spending time and effort to create the conditions most likely to
produce gas bubbles (as with every other method), with the Egg Foam Method you simply whip
them up yourself. The challenge then of course: to keep those bubbles from bursting.

The Egg Foam Method begins, unsurprisingly, with eggs. Usually just the whites, though it is
possible to make egg foams using the yolks too (they dont fluff up as well, but more on the reasons
for that later). The eggs are introduced to some sort of whipping device a stand mixer, hand
mixer, or whisk. Air begins to be incorporated and before long, voila , ze foam. The next step is
usually to introduce some form of acid stabilizer (cream of tartar, say) before the foam is folded into
the other ingredients in the recipe.

What do those air bubbles do in the, erwhatever-it-is? Just as with all other mixing methods, they
leaven (or push up) the batter. Once again its not expanding air that accomplishes the task. Air
only expands by 20% or so in the heat of an oven. Rather its the water in the batter that does it. As I
mentioned last week, water expands to some 1400 times its original volume when its converted to
steam. The steam blows up the air bubbles and bingo, youve got leavening.
Interestingly its the hand mixer, as opposed to one of the stand variety, thats the best tool for
making egg foam, since it allows you to chase down every last little pocket of unwhipped white (my
big ol Viking mixer is terrible at egg whites). Of course you can do it by hand, but there are very few
people out there with the forearm strength to whip up a mass of egg whites into peaks before some
of the foam starts to collapse. I once knew a brawny Swede who could do it. That sweet old lady
could have pimp-slapped a longshoreman unconscious. The rest of us mortals need machines.

The Biscuit Method

The biscuit method is probably the simplest of all the Big Five mixing techniques. On first glance, it
resembles Muffin Method in that the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients are mixed together
separately before being combined. The key difference is that the fat, which is almost always a solid
fat, is rubbed into the dry goods before the main mixing event begins.

What are the advantages to that? First, the cutting in of fat serves the function of coating and
lubricating flour granules, which greatly reduces the ability of the gluten molecules they contain to
bond to one another. Thus, the Biscuit Method makes baked goods tender. The other big thing the
Biscuit Method does is make things flaky.

Hows that? Well remember the rubbing thing. Most of the time when you dive into a recipe that
employs the Biscuit Method, youll come across instructions directing you to stop rubbing when the
fat blobs are about the size of peas (or at the very least when the mixture starts to look like corn
meal). The reason you do this is because flakiness is a direct result of odd-sized blobs of fat, which,
when the dough is rolled out into a sheet, form semisolid layers. When the dough is baked these
layers melt away, leaving long slender gaps in the structure. These gaps are what are responsible for
the texture we know as flaky.

Like the Muffin Method, the Biscuit Method is characterized by minimal mixing. Once the dry
ingredients and the wet ingredients finally come together, the less you work the dough the better.
This is especially important with pie crust, where any gluten formation at all can lead to significant
shrinkage and toughness.
HISTORY OF BAKING
Baking is a method of cooking food that uses prolonged dry heat, normally in an oven, but also in
hot ashes, or on hot stones. The most common baked item is bread but many other types of foods
are baked. Heat is gradually transferred "from the surface of cakes, cookies, and breads to their
centre. As heat travels through it transforms batters and doughs into baked goods with a firm dry
crust and a softer centre". Baking can be combined with grilling to produce a hybrid barbecue
variant by using both methods simultaneously, or one after the other. Baking is related to
barbecuing because the concept of the masonry oven is similar to that of a smoke pit.

Because of historical social and familial roles, baking has traditionally been performed at home by
women for domestic consumption and by men in bakeries and restaurants for local consumption.
When production was industrialized, baking was automated by machines in large factories. The art
of baking remains a fundamental skill and is important for nutrition, as baked goods, especially
breads, are a common but important food, both from an economic and cultural point of view. A
person who prepares baked goods as a profession is called a baker.

*Foods and techniques

All types of food can be baked, but some require special care and protection from direct
heat. Various techniques have been developed to provide this protection.
In addition to bread, baking is used to prepare cakes, pastries, pies, tarts, quiches, cookies, scones,
crackers, pretzels, and more. These popular items are known collectively as "baked goods," and are
often sold at a bakery, which is a store that carries only baked goods, or at markets, grocery stores,
farmers markets or through other venues.
Eggs can also be used in baking to produce savory or sweet dishes. In combination with
dairy products especially cheese, they are often prepared as a dessert. For example, although a
baked custard can be made using starch (in the form of flour, corn flour, arrowroot, or potato flour),
the flavor of the dish is much more delicate if eggs are used as the thickening agent. Baked custards,
such as cre me caramel, are among the items that need protection from an oven's direct heat, and the
bain-marie method serves this purpose. The cooking container is half submerged in water in
another, larger one, so that the heat in the oven is more gently applied during the baking process.
Baking a successful souffle requires that the baking process be carefully controlled. The oven
temperature must be absolutely even and the oven space not shared with another dish. These
factors, along with the theatrical effect of an air-filled dessert, have given this baked food a
reputation for being a culinary achievement.
Similarly, a good baking technique (and a good oven) is also needed to create a baked Alaska
because of the difficulty of baking hot meringue and cold ice cream at the same time.
Baking can also be used to prepare various other foods such as pizzas, baked potatoes,
baked apples, baked beans, some casseroles and pasta dishes such as lasagna.
*Baking in 1889 *Techniques in designing their bread
Baking in ancient times
The world's oldest oven was discovered in Croatia in 2014 dating back 6500 years ago. The Ancient
Egyptians baked bread using yeast, which they had previously been using to brew beer.[4] Bread
baking began in Ancient Greece around 600 BC, leading to the invention of enclosed ovens.[4]
"Ovens and worktables have been discovered in archaeological digs from Turkey (Hacilar) to
Palestine (Jericho) and date back to 5600 BC.
Baking flourished during the Roman Empire. Beginning around 300 BC, the pastry cook became an
occupation for Romans (known as the pastillarium) and became a respected profession because
pastries were considered decadent, and Romans loved festivity and celebration. Thus, pastries were
often cooked especially for large banquets, and any pastry cook who could invent new types of tasty
treats was highly prized. Around 1 AD, there were more than three hundred pastry chefs in Rome,
and Cato wrote about how they created all sorts of diverse foods and flourished professionally and
socially because of their creations. Cato speaks of an enormous number of breads including; libum
(sacrificial cakes made with flour), placenta (groats and cress), spira (our modern day flour
pretzels), scibilata (tortes), savaillum (sweet cake), and globus apherica (fritters). A great selection
of these, with many different variations, different ingredients, and varied patterns, were often found
at banquets and dining halls. The Romans baked bread in an oven with its own chimney, and had
mills to grind grain into flour. A bakers' guild was established in 168 BC in Rome.

*An Egyptian funerary Model of a bakery and brewery (11th dynasty, circa 20091998 B.C.)