Shifting gears this week we went from pouring the batter and soft dough of muffins, quick breads, and biscuits to punching, shaping, and forming the yeast doughs for breads. The opportunity to take out our frustrations by wailing on a mound of risen dough never happened, though, as Chef Chad informed us from the outset that you have to be gentler with the dough than most home bakers usually are. We "Fold-over" rather than "Punch Down" after the first fermentation (what you folks at home call "rise"). The science and mechanics of this kinder, gentler method was explained thoroughly and our excellent resultant products proved it all to be true. That didn't stop me from throwing a gut-punch into a mound of unsuspecting dough when chef wasn't looking as a tip of the hat to all the moms and grandmas out there slugging it out all these years.
We use some big equipment in making commercial-sized quantities of baked goods. If you take your home KitchenAid and put it on steroids, you get our mid-size mixer, good for around 15 pounds of dough. Then expose that mixer to radiation and you have the Big Boy, capable of dealing with 40 pounds of dough and destroying Tokyo. (This is a Godzilla reference, so quit shaking your head and thinking "oh my, how insensitive!") There are ridiculously larger machines in most commercial bakery operations, but all operate on the exact same principles. The formulas used in baking had my math-challenged brain swirling just a bit during our first week here, but really it's pretty simple: Multiply if you need more, divide if you need less.
Easy. No worries. But the dough and the machine are only there to prepare you for the part of the job that takes real knowledge and experience: Baking.
To most of the world, you throw the bread into a hot oven and wait a while. For the slightly more affluent (or lazy) you put the ingredients into a bread machine and touch a button. Chef Chad has taught us that you have to take into account gluten content and construction, temperature of the dough, direction of heat, moisture content, desired color and crusting, and of course, humidity. Yes, apparently bread baking in the warm, humid air of the deep south and here in Hawaii will come out different than bread baked in the dry air of say, Las Vegas. For that reason, you need to use what is called the Baker's Percentage to match your dough composition with where you are making it. Let's take a look:
The amount of flour in your dough always rates 100 %. All other ingredients will relate to the flour by a proportionate percentage based upon it's weight compared to the flour, and these percentages will be added together to total your baker's percentage, say 155%. To do this, you must convert the ounces of each ingredient to a decimal equivelent and divide these amounts by the flour ounce amount to get the percentage. The flour is 100%, water 30% (30% of the flour's weight), sugar 20%, etc...Now take your percentage and adjust moisture allowing for humidity and establish a NEW baker's percentage. Got that? Yeah, I didn't either for a few days. We'll save the Total Temperature Factor formula for next rotation.
This week we made White and Honey Wheat Split-Top Bread in larger amounts (for the bake sale, of course). Our lone failed project was Brownies. A classmate who shall remain nameless mis-measured the bitter cocoa powder and ruined the first batch so we had to do it again. Chef Chad measured out the ingredients for us on the new batch, which seemed to defeat the purpose of doing it again, since the issue was with the measuring and it would have made more sense to have the student do the measuring again under observation to possibly identify the problem and make corrections. Oh well. The second batch came out great and we move on. We then got into firmer doughs and manipulation of dough into specific shapes.
Bagels were pretty easy, just roll them out and connect the ends to form a circle. Single-Knot Yeast Rolls were just that, a rolled dough tied into a knot. The Brioche dough became a miniature bowling pin shape with a hole punched in the big end and the little end poked through. I'd never eaten brioche before, and it was hands-down the best roll I've ever had. We even did a little braiding with our Challa Bread, roll it out long, criscross, left over right, right over left...you women (and poofy long-haired men) know what I'm talking about. Lastly, we snapped a knot in our Bavarian Pretzel.
Thing That Made Me Think "Who Knew?"
All true bagels are boiled first.
In a week where I ate biscuits, brownies, bread, and pretzels, I managed to lose a couple pounds.
Proceeds from the bake sale are managed by Chef Chad and put right back into the budget for Bake Shop.
(I withdraw my previous insinuations)
There is a gadget that looks like 5 rolling pizza cutters welded together that's used for marking portions of cakes and pan-baked goods.
Pretzels are dipped in "Caustic Solution" before baking...perfectly safe, but I think they should change the name.
"It makes them moist!" - Billy Crystal as Buddy Young, Jr. Mr. Saturday Night
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