Ratio - The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman.
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Bread Dough
Bread = 5 parts flour : 3 parts water (plus yeast and salt)
Everyone should be able to make bread when they want to, but rarely do we because of the perceived effort involved. When you know the ratio for bread, bread is easy. You don’t need a recipe or even a measuring cup. All you need is a bowl and a scale. The bread ratio is a common one. I’ve adapted it from what is called the baker’s percentage: 100 percent flour, 60 percent water, 3 percent fresh yeast, 2 percent salt. It’s a good working ratio. If you want more bread, double it.
If your scale has a gram measurement on it, it’s even easier (and shows why metric weights are so much more efficient than our U.S. equivalents): 1,000 grams of flour, 600 grams of water, 3 grams of fresh yeast, 2 grams of salt. If you have a standing mixer, your dough can be mixing in a matter of minutes. Set your mixing bowl on the scale, zero it out, add your flour; zero the scale again and add your water; add the yeast to the water to make sure it dissolves, add the salt, and begin mixing.
Yeast and salt are critical components in basic bread dough, but they are used in such small quantities that making them part of the ratio makes the ratio more complicated than I think it needs to be. Salt is critical for flavor. Bread tastes bland without it.
The baker’s percentage calls for 2 percent of the weight of the flour. So you can measure it that way if you wish: .2 ounces for every 10 ounces of flour, or 2 grams for every 100 grams of flour. This is where a scale really comes in handy, but if you measure only by volume, you can add ¼ teaspoon of kosher salt for every cup of flour, or 1 teaspoon for 4 cups (which usually weighs about 20 ounces).
Yeast, of course, is what makes bread such a pleasure to eat. But it’s also mysterious—the yeast organisms are alive but invisible. Yeast comes in numerous forms—fresh, active, and instant—and this can be confusing. Active yeast? When would you want inactive yeast? What’s the difference between active and instant? Why would you use fresh?
I learned bread baking with fresh yeast: perishable, fragrant cakes with a wonderful and unique texture that turn to a paste in the liquid and dissolve. I’ve found that using fresh yeast results in the best flavor for basic white hearth bread, also called a lean bread or lean dough, as opposed to a soft white bread that includes fats, sugar, or egg. But bakers increasingly use dried yeast because of increased quality and a longer shelf life. I now use Red Star yeast, and many bakers use SAF yeast (also the maker of Red Star yeast) for its performance and flavor.
Active dry yeast is yeast that’s been dried and given an inactive coating; this yeast must be dissolved in water before being mixed with the flour. Most companies recommend doing this in water that’s about 110°F. But this seems to be for insurance rather than a strict requirement. I add mine to cold water and it’s always worked fine. Instant, or quick-rise, yeast has been quickly dried and doesn’t have the same coating on it, and so does not need to be rehydrated before being added to the water and flour.
Instant comes as smaller granules and, because it doesn’t consist partially of inactive yeast, is the stronger of the two yeasts by weight. Active dry yeast is typically soaked first, instant does not need to be. Yeast can be stored in the refrigerator but is best stored in the freezer.
The quantity of dried yeast you need to raise a loaf of bread is remarkably variable regardless of the type. Adding ¼ teaspoon, ½ teaspoon (2 grams), or 2½ teaspoons will result in similar leavening. The more yeast, the faster it goes, and as a rule, the longer the fermentation time (time during which the yeast feeds and releases gas), the more flavorful the bread.
A bread that’s mixed with a lot of yeast and baked 4 hours later hasn’t had the time to develop flavors—so adding flavors to these doughs, herbs, aromatics, olives, nuts, even a coating of olive oil and coarse salt before baking, goes a long way in this case. It’s a good strategy, though, to mix the dough a day ahead and allow it to ferment in the refrigerator for a day, then let it sit out to warm slightly before baking it.
Most manufacturers suggest how much yeast will leaven a given amount of flour—2¼ ounces will leaven 4 cups of flour, for instance. But 1/8 teaspoon, ¼ gram, will leaven that same amount of flour given enough time (and result in a better flavor from the increased fermentation). Adding too much yeast will cause the dough to rise too quickly and it won’t develop any flavor, though if you’re in a hurry, adding too much yeast works.
As a rule, either follow the instructions on the package or add 1 teaspoon for every pound of flour, which is about 3 cups. If you prefer to use fresh yeast, calculate your yeast quantity by multiplying the weight of your flour by .03. But, again, the other elements of making the dough are more critical than the type or amount of yeast used.
Bread is alive until you cook it, and so it’s an especially complex system that’s affected by many variables, especially temperature, but also by how long it’s mixed, how long it rises, how long it rises again before being baked, and how it’s shaped. All these variables affect the finished bread, so you need to pay attention as you practice.
And mastering these variables, bringing bread baking to the artisan level, takes time and requires special ovens, varying mixtures of flour, the use of wild yeasts for sourdoughs, or prefermenting part of the bread—creating what’s called a sponge, or using dough left over from a previous batch, often called a levain.
But the fact is, the baseline for a good bread dough is the baker’s percentage or, simplified, 5 : 3 flour to water. It’s good as is, but because you’re not developing flavor through the above techniques of long fermentation and natural yeast starters, it’s best to give it a little extra flavor by rubbing it with olive oil and giving it a sprinkling of salt before it goes into the oven.
Bread basics are important. Mixing the flour-water-yeast combination is the first critical step. Mixing or kneading develops the gluten, the protein in flour that results in a dough’s becoming elastic. A standing mixer and a dough hook make the mixing very easy, but remember that it’s possible to overmix a dough with a mixer—the gluten network can break down after too much mixing, resulting in a flabby dough that doesn’t hold the gas bubbles well. It’s difficult to overmix when kneading by hand. You’ve mixed your dough enough when you can stretch a small piece of it into a translucent sheet without tearing it.
Elasticity is the quality that allows a dough to be leavened. As the yeast feeds and releases gas, the dough stretches but is strong enough to contain the bubbles. The first rise allows the yeast to multiply and feed and release gas (carbon dioxide and ethanol), which helps to flavor the dough as well as to develop the gluten network.
Some of the gas is then pressed out of the dough when it’s kneaded down after the first rise and shaped, a process that continues to develop gluten structure, release excess gas, and redistribute the yeast to give it a fresh food supply, an important step.
The window pane test. To know if you’ve kneaded your bread dough enough, cut a small piece of it and stretch it gently. If it reaches the point of translucency before it tears, the dough is ready to be shaped into a boule, covered, and left to rise.
The purpose of allowing the dough to rise is, like mixing, to continue to develop the protein network that gives the dough its wonderful texture. The rises also help to develop flavor, especially with naturally leavened bread, sourdough flavored by wild yeasts and acid-producing bacteria. Bread should be allowed to rise at room temperature (the warmer it is, the faster it will rise) until it’s doubled in size. It is then punched down, shaped, allowed to rise again, and then baked. Or it can be refrigerated for up to a day and allowed to temper for an hour or two out of the refrigerator before being baked.
Shaping is the final part of mixing, taking that gluten network and putting it into its final order, whether it’s a hand-rolled baguette, which is essentially a rectangle of dough that’s folded over and over on itself and then rolled, or simply stretched into a loose shape of a “slipper,” or ciabatta in Italian.
The bread is then allowed to rise again in its final shape, a stage called proofing, for about an hour, depending on the environment. Before cooking the bread, score it with a sharp knife or razor, which helps it to expand and gives it an intriguing appearance. (For ciabatta, don’t score it; stipple it aggressively with your fingers.)
The oven environment is important. Professional deck ovens often are built with the capacity to inject steam into the oven during the first minutes of baking. Steam helps to develop an especially delicious crispy crust. Home bakers develop their own strategies for introducing steam or simply moisture into their ovens.
Place a cast-iron pan in the oven when you preheat it, then when you put the bread in the oven, you can add a cup of water to this pan to create steam. You can bake your bread in a covered Dutch oven, which traps the water vapor the bread releases during cooking—an exceptional method. This can indeed help you to achieve a thick crisp crust, but it’s not strictly necessary. And you can bake on a metal baking sheet, but some sort of ceramic cooking surface is best.
When the dough is put into the oven, two things happen. The yeast becomes especially active, generating more gas more quickly, and the gas bubbles that have been created expand with the heat. This creates what is referred to as “oven spring,” the rapid growth of the dough during its first minutes in the oven. The yeast activity and gas expansion continue until the heat kills the yeast and solidifies the starch and protein.
Knowing when bread is done comes with experience. When you tap the bottom it should sound hollow; use your common sense; and, if you want, use a thermometer—breads should be at least 165°F internal temperature but ideally are between 180°F and 210°F inside.
A word about flour. Use bread flour for making bread. It has a higher gluten content than all-purpose flour. But if you only have all-purpose flour, use it. It makes good bread, too.
Finally, a reiteration of the convenience of using a scale. When you use a scale, you can measure your flour and water ingredients straight into your mixing bowl; when you’re done, the mixing bowl will be the vessel you let your dough rise in, and you’ll always get consistent results.
Basic Bread Dough
The following recipe is what’s referred to in bakeshops as a basic lean dough. Meaning there’s no fat in it. It’s pure bread and it’s satisfying and delicious, especially sprinkled with salt and drizzled with olive oil. It can be shaped into a baguette or a boule or stretched into the shape called ciabatta. If shaping it into a boule, I highly recommend cooking it in a Dutch oven. And it can be varied in countless ways, a few of which I describe here.
20 ounces bread flour (about 4 cups)
12 ounces water
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon active or instant yeast
Set your mixing bowl on a scale (if using), zero the scale, and pour the flour in. Zero the scale again and add the water. Add the salt. Sprinkle the yeast over the surface of the water to allow it to dissolve. Fit the bowl into the mixer and, using the paddle attachment, mix on medium speed until the dough has come together. Replace the paddle with a dough hook.
(The whole procedure can be done with a dough hook, but the paddle brings the ingredients together rapidly. This dough can be kneaded by hand as well.)
Continue mixing until your dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. To test your dough, pull off a chunk and stretch it into a square. If it’s elastic enough to allow you to achieve a translucent sheet of dough, it’s ready. If it tears before you can do this, continue mixing, either in the mixer or by hand, until the dough is smooth and elastic.
Remove the mixing bowl from the machine, cover it with plastic wrap, and allow the dough to rise to about twice its size. Push a finger into the dough. The dough should give some resistance, but not spring back. If it springs back, let it rest longer. If you let your dough rise for too long, it will feel flabby and loose when you press a finger into it and will be less eager to rise when you bake it.
If baking it the same day, preheat your oven to 450°F (preferably 45 minutes before baking). If you intend to use steam, put a cast-iron pan in the oven and add 1 cup water when ready to bake.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it to expel excess gas and redistribute the yeast.
Cover with a dish towel and let rest for 10 to 15 minutes. Shape the dough into a boule by pushing the dough back and forth on the counter in a circular motion until you have a round smooth ball; or shape it into a ciabatta by pulling it lengthwise so that it’s about a foot long and an inch thick.
For a baguette, stretch the dough into a rectangle roughly 12 by 6 inches; fold the top edge of the dough over on itself and pound the heel of your hand to pinch this edge down; fold it again, pounding the heel of your palm down to seal it, and continue until it is a roll; then roll by hand and stretch the baguette out as you do so to tighten its interior structure.
Cover the dough with a dish towel and allow to rise, or proof, for about an hour. Or cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for up to a day; allow the bread to rise at room temperature for at least 1 ½ hours before baking.
When ready to bake a boule, slice an X or a pound symbol into the top of the dough to help it to expand; for ciabatta, stipple the dough with your fingers and, if you wish, coat with olive oil and a sprinkling of kosher salt. For a baguette, make long diagonal scores.
Bake for 10 minutes at 450°F, then reduce the oven temperature to 375°F and continue baking until done, 45 to 50 minutes for a boule or baguette, 30 minutes for ciabatta.
YIELD: 1 STANDARD LOAF.
