The 11 Ingredient Factors of Bread Making

  Upon reading the assigned pages for this week’s pre-investigation, I found myself fascinated by the topic of the roles each ingredient plays in bread making. Not only how each ingredient affects the flavor of the bread, but also the chemical processes behind each ingredient that help to form the bread. I learned that the 11 key ingredients that each lend a hand in the chemical process of making bread are flour, glutenin, gliadin, starch, water, yeast, salt, fats, sugar, eggs, and milk.

  Beginning on our list of 11 ingredients we have flour, glutenin, gliadin, and starch. The flour we use for bread making contains two kinds of protein, glutenin and gliadin, which both serve different purposes. The gliadin, which are long protein chains, mesh together into clumps while the bread is kneaded. These gliadin clumps are what hold the bread together and give it plasticity. As stated by McGee, “Gluten plasticity results from the presence of the gliadin proteins among the glutenins; because they’re compact, the gliadins act something like ball bearings, allowing portions of the glutenins to slide past each other without bonding” (2004, p. 522). On the others hand, the glutenins, which form long, coiled chains during the kneading process, serve to give the bread elasticity. When the dough is stretched, the glutenin chains uncoil, but when the dough is released the glutenin coils relent back to their original shape. While these proteins are vitally important to the bread making process, they only constitute a small portion of the flour. The rest is made up of starch, a sugar that fills in the gluten networks and acts to condition and tenderize the dough. Moving on to our next ingredient, we have water. The water in bread is what melds the proteins and starches together to constitute a dough. Adding a small amount of water to a dough “...gives an incompletely developed gluten and a crumbly texture,” whereas adding a lot of water “...gives a less concentrated gluten and a softer, moister dough and bread” (Mcgee, 2004, p. 523-525). Now that we have our flour and water kneaded together, we need something to raise the dough to make it light and fluffy. This is where yeast comes in to play. Similar to the way our cultured butter is fermenting and releasing gasses, yeasts are used in bread to ferment and produce air bubbles in the dough. Yeast is added to the dough after kneading, then left to rise for a period of time, where it releases carbon dioxide bubbles into the dough. These tiny bubbles take up about 80% of the finished product and make for a light and airy texture. The next two ingredients, salt and fats/oils are added to alter the previously mentioned gluten networks. The salt works to strengthen the gliadins and glutenins and give them more elasticity, whereas the fat/oil works to soften the gliadins and glutenins and tenderize the dough. The final three ingredients are some less commonly thought of, sugar, eggs, and milk. However, each can play a vital role in bread making depending on the outcome you are in search of. If added, sugar weakens the gliadin and glutenin chains, which in return makes for a more tender bread. It also helps to retain water, which helps the bread to stay moist. Eggs, when added to dough, fill the carbon dioxide bubbles and make for a more dense, tender loaf. Finally, when milk is added to a dough, its acidity breaks down the gluten chains. This also results in a more tender, moist bread if so desired.

References

McGee, H. (2004). On Food And Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. New York, NY:

   Scribner. Retrieved from http://wtf.tw/ref/mcgee.pdf.