Use Your Loaf: Let’s Learn How To Make Bread

This is part 2 of the Use Your Loaf series, where we go back to basics and learn exactly what’s going on when we make bread. In part one, we looked at the different ingredients and their purpose, and today we’re diving into the process that goes into creating delicious bread.

If we were to mix our ingredients together and then bake straight away, we would end up with a functional but flat bread. The most important thing these ingredients need is time. Time for flavour and gluten to develop, but we must actively do some work to help them along the way. Let’s look at the different stages of making a loaf of bread and explore a bit more.

Kneading

This is a step everybody knows, and one of my favourite parts of bread making. A bit of kneading and the shaggy mess of ingredients magically transforms into a smooth and bouncy dough. It’s really some sort of magic trick, and it’s great to wow kids with. But what is actually happening whilst we’re getting our arm workout in? Why does the dough react in that way?

Aside from evenly distributing our ingredients throughout the dough, kneading essentially builds strength in the bread, warming up the protein in the flour to develop stronger gluten strands and give a better rise. It’s hard to over-knead bread, but possible to under-knead, so it’s always best to look for the visual signs of the dough becoming lovely and smooth.

**There are no-knead breads, which is a great low-effort way to make all sorts of loaves – the bread just needs more time to get to the kneaded stage by itself.

First proof/bulk ferment

Now everybody gets to have a rest.

The dough has taken a pounding and turned into a taut, smooth ball, and now needs time to expand and develop flavour. It’s here where the yeast starts to shine: eating up the sugars from the flour and releasing carbon dioxide bubbles that strengthen the gluten, increasing the size of the bread.

We move to the next step once the dough has doubled in size, which normally takes between one and two hours depending on how warm or cold the environment is. Over or under-proofing here can result in a few different issues, namely a flat loaf.

**This step is often referred to as the bulk ferment in recipes as after this step, the dough can in theory be then divided into different loaves.

Shaping

So now we have a big beautiful airy dough, it’s time to form it into our desired shape before resting again. It may seem a bit counterintuitive to put a pause to the rising and intentionally push air out before letting it rise again, but this step is also crucial to avoid a flat and uneven loaf. 

By shaping and forming our loaf at this stage, we make sure the fermenting yeast can take a breather and won’t run out of energy before we put our bread in the oven. This means we can look forward to a nice rise in the oven (or oven spring). 

Here is also where we teach the dough what shape we want it to bake in, and then leave it to get used to its new living quarters. 

Second proof

The yeast is coming to the end of its energy supply and is beginning to ferment, slowly developing the flavour until we’re ready to bake. Knowing when the time is right to bake is difficult, but as with the other stages, you’ll get used to what visual cues to look out for.  The most popular method here is a poke-test: poke the bread dough and if it springs back slowly but not entirely, it is perfect.

Bake

The final stage!

Bread bakes hot. Very hot. During the initial stages of baking, the bread increases in volume (known as oven spring) as the yeast gives its last gasp of CO2 before its energy finally runs out. Steam is important to aid oven spring as it prevents the crust from forming for a short while, giving the yeast room to move and increase the size of the loaf. Bakery ovens have steam incorporated, but we can use a Dutch oven, or add a tray of ice cubes to the bottom of the oven to get a similar result.

As the loaf bakes, you will notice the crust turning brown. This is called the Maillard reaction and is when the amino acids (protein) and the carbohydrates (sugars) from the dough combine. Why is this important? It’s all about flavour! The sugars caramelise and help create the slightly nutty, rich taste that makes our loaves taste extra delicious.

So now we know all about exactly what goes into our bread, and the process of making it, it’s time to start building our control loaf.

Join me for the next part of Use Your Loaf where we will look at some classic bread recipes and road-test them to come up with the perfect easy bread recipe.