Flow States

Well I am back from my exile in the flour mines to shape up the front matter for Breaducation. While I haven't quite finished it yet, I've made significant progress: I've tightened it up considerably, shaving off more than 20k words while still retaining most of the content (and even adding some sections that I'd yet to write before now). I started the effort with lots of anxiety about whether this would even be possible, given how many times I've already worked the material over (I am now on draft number five). It was slow-going at first, and though in theory I need to trim it back by an equal amount before I am done, I'm relieved I got this far.

I think there were two reasons for this. One, I am clearly a wordy writer. I'm used to working on stand-alone essays and articles, where everything needs proper context—I can't assume any one reader will know the meaning of a term or is familiar with a particular topic, so I tend to go long, to make it universally legible. But in a book, where subjects appear repeatedly, I can afford to be more efficient, especially the further along I go. (Assuming my readers start at the beginning and read all the way through, which I realize is a big if.)

I also discovered that it took five drafts to get the gestalt of the material into my head. I wrote it over two years in bits, pieces, fits, and starts, with little rhyme or reason to what I worked on when. And it's a lot of material—even slimmed down, it is probably 150-175 printed cookbook pages now. This time around, I went through the material from first page to last at least a dozen times, and it finally started to appear in my head as a whole book. Once it did, it became far easier to see where I could afford to be more efficient and where I needed to spell things out.

I have much work to do yet, but I am on track to have something tight and short enough to send to my editor next week, so I can get back to working on the recipes. As of today, I have exactly two months to finalize some 50 recipes—a few of which have not had much in the way of testing yet—but I have less anxiety about that. (So far, at least. Talk to me again in a month.)

Much of what I'll share of my own on Wordloaf for the next year or so will be taken directly from the book. Today I have a chapter from the current draft that I'd considered removing entirely until I realized it would be possible lose significant amounts of fat elsewhere. It might get cut down the line, so here it is for posterity.

(Also, a heads up: I'm gonna send out the Friday Bread Basket only infrequently over the next few months, to focus on the book.)

Dough Dynamics and Flow

Dough dynamics is my term for the myriad considerations bakers make when creating a dough, and what they observe and tweak when working with one. All of these elements occur in tandem with the others as a web of effects: Manipulating any one will effect the others too—pluck a string and the entire web vibrates in response. (Much of this is heavily informed by Trevor Wilson’s excellent book Open Crumb Mastery, which spends hundreds of pages discussing what I have but a few to cover here.)

Dough rheology

Many of these ideas relate to rheology, the branch of physics concerned with of the "flow" of matter, particularly gases and fluids. Doughs are solids, but they behave like fluids. Water in a dough exists in two forms: bound and free. Bound water is locked up within the dough's starches, proteins, and fiber. As long as each of these elements is saturated, any additional water in the dough will be free, and it is free water that creates flow—the more free water, the more the dough behaves like a liquid. Bread baking in many ways is about manipulating and controlling flow—we want to encourage a dough to be as liquid as necessary to achieve a certain result, but not so much that it cannot hold itself up be coaxed into a particular shape.

Dough development and structure

Dough development is the creation of structure in a dough throughout its lifespan. Gluten development during mixing is a major part of dough development, but often only the start—it continues with the accumulation of gas and acids during fermentation, and the manipulation of structure by the baker during the bulk fermentation (folds) and at the end of it (shaping).

Structure is the result of dough development, inside the loaf and out: the overall shape of the bread and the size, shape, and distribution of the alveoli within it.

Elasticity and extensibility

Elasticity and extensibility are the two ends of the dough-flow spectrum. An elastic dough resists flow or manipulation, while an extensible one flows easily, either on its own, or when manipulated by a baker. Much of the effort in bread baking is directed toward achieving the proper balance between extensibility and elasticity, to create a dough that flows just so—not so elastic that it is hard to shape, while not so extensible that it flows off the bench or cannot hold its shape.

The “proper" balance between elasticity and extensibility of course varies from bread to bread. Doughs that require lots of manipulation—baguettes or hand-stretched flatbread doughs—benefit from more extensibility, to avoid a dough that fights back against the baker or springs back after shaping. Other doughs want more elasticity, either to make shaping easier—it's challenging to form a perfect bagel or cinnamon roll if the dough spreads on its own—or to give the shaped bread sufficient structure to hold itself up during proofing and baking.

More water promotes extensibility in a dough; reducing hydration promotes elasticity. If a dough fights being folded or shaped, perhaps it needed more water; if it spreads out excessively after folding or shaping, it might have benefited from a lower hydration.

Doughs higher in gluten-forming proteins will tend to be more elastic, those lower in them more extensible. But the ratio of glutenin and gliadin in the flour matters too: glutenin gives doughs elasticity and strength, while gliaden provides extensibility. In wheat flour, the ratio of glutenin and gliadin is relatively balanced. Spelt flour, on the other hand, is much higher in gliadin than wheat flour, so adding spelt to a formula can yield a more extensible dough. (And using too much of it can produce doughs that are slack, making them challenging to shape and low in volume once baked without special techniques.)

Tension

Tension is elasticity plus force: A rubber band at rest is elastic, but floppy and flexible; stretch it out between your hands and—now tense—it can be plucked like a guitar string. Dough tension can be ephemeral or permanent: Tension created by folds performed early on in the bulk or spaced far apart fades, while those done later or closer together will produce lasting tension. An experienced baker learns to manipulate tension—knowing when to apply more folds or extra force when the dough demands it, and when to back off when tension is adequate.

A shaped loaf has both internal and external tension. The “skin” of the loaf is like a stretchy bag surrounding liquid dough within; by manipulating external tension, a baker can coax even a loose mass of dough into a smooth, stable shape. A coating of flour will begin the process of building tension into the skin, simply by drying it out. The baker then adds more tension during shaping.

Bags of balloons

In Open Crumb Mastery, Trevor Wilson likens bread dough to a “bag full of balloons.” Imagine each alveolus in the dough as a balloon. At the end of mixing, the balloons are present, but uninflated, and the bag is floppy and flexible. It can be folded and shaped easily, but the effect is transient, because there’s nothing propping the alveoli up internally.

As gases begin to accumulate, the alveoli expand. Early on, when the alveoli are only partially-inflated, they are flexible and able to slip and slide past one another. The dough is easy to stretch, fold, and shape, but because of the gas within the alveoli, the results are more permanent. Eventually, the alveoli are inflated to capacity, and the dough is full and rigid. The gluten surrounding them is taut and inflexible, so the dough resists elongation and manipulation. And the alveoli are unable to move around within the dough; their positions are now fixed in place.

Hydration and dough wetness

Hydration greatly influences the texture of a dough, since one with more water will flow more than one with less. While bakers commonly relate dough hydration with texture, hydration is really only an indirect indicator of texture. Two otherwise-identical doughs made from different flours will likely need different amounts of water to achieve a similar texture, for example. So it's best to think about dough texture in terms of wetness or dryness—wet doughs flow freely, while dry ones do not.

How much a particular dough flows depends much upon the absorption rate of the flour. Refined flours are less absorptive than high-extraction or whole-grain ones (since the bran in whole-grain flours absorbs far more water than the starches), and will need less water to achieve a particular texture.

Even two flours of a similar extraction rate can behave differently to one another. Those with higher protein generally need more water than those with less to flow similarly, both because the proteins absorb more water than the starches, and because more protein usually means more strength, and the stronger the dough, the less apt it is to flow.

And how a flour is milled matters too. The milling process and the hardness of the grain influence the amount of damaged starch in the flour. Damaged starch absorbs two to three times as much water as undamaged starch, so the more damaged starch, the more water the flour will need to absorb before it can flow.

Fermentation rate and gas production

The growth rates of yeast and bacteria are exponential, not linear. Each cell divides into two; those two divide into four, four into eight, eight into sixteen, and so on. Which means that the rate of fermentation in a dough—and gas production—increases over time; in fact, most of the action happens in the latter stages of the proof. An experienced baker learns to anticipate this ramping up of fermentation when deciding when and how often to perform folds, and when to shape the dough.

Acidity

Since fermentation rate and gas accumulation increases over time, acidity does too. When dissolved in the dough, carbon dioxide is acidic, so doughs become more acidic as fermentation progresses. And when doughs are fermented with sourdough—or yeasted and long-fermented—lactic acid bacteria also contribute acidity, lowering the pH further. Acids strengthen the bonds between gluten strands, so fermentation influences dough structure doubly: both from the force of the expanding alveoli on it and the accumulation of acids in it.

Each of these effects happens with or without the involvement of the baker. Folding is important for building the proper structure in a dough, but it isn't essential for structure formation generally. Over time a baker learns to trust this process, knowing that—even when a dough starts out wet and soupy—it will eventually strengthen and firm up on its own. The trick is learning to handle a dough just enough—to give it the strength and tension it requires to shape easily, without overdoing it.

Enzymatic activity

The dough-strengthening effects of increased acidity are not limitless; as the pH drops, the activity of gluten-degrading protease enzymes picks up too. They reach peak activity around pH 4.0, and their activity ramps up the closer the dough gets to this point. This is the primary reason that overfermented doughs collapse during proofing or in the oven: protease enzymes degrade the gluten structure to the point that the dough can no longer hold itself up. Doughs containing large quantities of bran-rich whole-grain or high-extraction flour have naturally higher enzyme loads. They also ferment more quickly, thanks to the extra enzymes and nutrition they contain, so a baker must take extra care when both formulating and working with them.

Preferments and the amount of prefermented flour

The addition of preferments—sourdough or yeasted—can increase or decrease dough strength depending upon several factors. Preferments bring structure to a dough because the gluten they contain is pre-developed; they also supply acidity, which further strengthens the final dough. Thus the amount of preferment used in a dough has great implications for how the final dough behaves. (With sourdoughs, the amount used also dictates the rate at which the final dough ferments.)

But preferments can also confer extensibility to a dough, particularly if they are high in hydration, since they will be rich in the yeast-degradation products L-cysteine and glutathione. Moreover, thanks to a low pH and high protease activity, the gluten in liquid preferments is already partially degraded. Thus a baker learns to select one type of preferment or another, depending upon what they aim to achieve.

On open crumb

While much of this chapter has been informed by Trevor's book, Open Crumb Mastery, you'll note that I haven't actually referenced "open crumb" anywhere in it. I understand the appeal of those pearlescent, wildly open-crumbed loaves on social media that so many bakers lust after, but it's not something I chase myself. Of course I want the crumb on my lean, rustic loaves to be open rather than compact, but they usually are without me needing to engineer it. And in any case, I usually want my bread to be open enough, but not so open that whatever I slather my toast with ends up on my lap and not my mouth. I achieve the style of crumb I prefer through careful fermentation of my doughs and preferments, creating sufficient structure in my doughs during mixing and folding, and deliberate, gentle shaping.

If super open-crumbed loaves is something you desire, I think that's great! I appreciate all the ways bread can be made, and I love considering the techniques that go into achieving certain results. But open crumb for open crumb's sake is not my thing, so you'll want to read Trevor's book if it is, along with my friend Addie Roberts's excellent book Secrets of Open Crumb. Trevor and Addie are open-crumb baking pros, and their books will provide much of the intel you need. In any case, as they undoubtedly would tell you too, you'll need to master the basics long before you can push the open-crumb envelope.

—Andrew