Monday, March 23, 2009

Attractive Baking Tips For Making Bread

By Jack Bowie

Bread is a delicious, inexpensive and portable food that is made from flour through moistening, kneading and baking. It is one of the oldest prepared foods which is not only convenient but also cheap. Making your own bread at home is quite easy too if you have a bread machine and some nice bread recipes.

Before you can bake bread, you need to make sure that your bread dough rise first and that's the main reason why you need yeast which is a tiny plant-like microbe. As the yeasts start eating and digesting the sugar you feed them, they will expel gas which will cause the dough to rise. Let the dough rise for a few hours and it will double in size. It is also believe that if you add ginger and cinnamon into the mixture, the yeast will perform better.

Most bread recipes will use salt as one of the main ingredients because it is capable of improving the dough as well as the final bread taste. The main function of salt is to strengthen the gluten and retards yeast growth. Honey and sugar is used to help the browning and moisture retention in dough. You can also use pectin and gelatin to improve moisture retention but they might not work as well as lecithin.

The best flour you can use to make yeast bread is bread flour as it is high in protein and other essential vitamins and minerals. By using bread flour, you can be rest assured that the bread you bake is going to be wholesome and delicious. Dough that are made from bread flour will tend to rise better and retain gasses when you bake it, so that your final bread will be larger as well as having better texture.

You can use substitute bread flour with all-purpose flour but your bread will be less tasty. Regardless, with a tablespoon of wheat gluten, your bread will taste the same as if it was made with bread flour. Indeed, gluten is responsible for the stretchiness of dough and for the shapes that baked goods hold. Many professional bakers use gluten as a secret ingredient to produce delicious breads and rolls.

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