Precision is important when baking bread

Have you ever made a recipe and it didn’t turn out quite like you expected? Have you ever tried to figure out why, and then try and make it again?

In most cases, making up a recipe can be rather forgiving. Adding too much garlic isn’t necessarily the end of the dish. Substituting salt for sugar, or vice versa, can slow things down, but you’ll likely taste it first before tossing.

Baking is a little less forgiving. Think of making breads or cookies like doing chemistry. Certain things work well in certain proportions, but if you make a mistake or the recipe is written wrong, things won’t work out too well.

I recently came across a bread recipe that sounded interesting enough that my wife wanted to make it. It called for a quantity of whipping cream, which should add a degree of tenderness not normally had in a loaf of bread. She carefully measured out all the ingredients and got a bowl full of soup. After adding another 3/4 cup of flour, the dough finally came together enough to finish the dough in a manner that allowed a loaf to be shaped and baked. A symptom of all that extra flour developed while baking, in that it took far longer than expected, which slowed down the loaf’s ability to brown in the time allotted. After the loaf cooled, cutting a slice off of it revealed a tasty loaf that was far more dense than expected. What was wrong?

The recipe as written called for:

2 1/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon yeast

2 1/2 teaspoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 1/2 tablespoons butter

1/4 cup whipping cream

1 cup water

She also added another 3/4 cup of flour. The trouble was, with all that water and flour, a lot of gluten was able to develop during kneading, resulting in a dense loaf. The proportions of water and cream were flipped, and the added butter was unnecessary. What should have happened was something like the following:

1/4 cup water

1 cup whipping cream

3/4 teaspoon yeast

2 cups flour

3 tablespoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Mix water, cream and yeast for 5 minutes. Add flour, sugar, and salt. Knead for 8 to 10 minutes. Cover and let rise for one hour. Uncover and punch down. Cover and let rest for 15 minutes. Shape dough into a rectangle and tightly roll into a log shape. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place in greased bread pan and let rise for 30 to 40 minutes. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown.

Another recipe that sounded interesting called for a reasonable amount of cottage cheese. The recipe as written called for:

2 packages yeast

1/2 cup warm water

2 cups cottage cheese

1/4 cup sugar

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 eggs, beaten

4 1/2 cups flour

Dissolve yeast in water. Heat cottage cheese until lukewarm. Stir in sugar, salt, soda, eggs, and yeast. Gradually add flour. Place in a bowl. Cover and let rise about 1 1/2 hours. Punch down. Turn dough onto floured surface. Divide into 24 pieces. In 2 greased 9 inch cake pans, arrange 12 pieces of dough each. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Allow to rest 30 minutes before baking for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Her problem? Substituting a single acting homemade baking powder for the baking soda. Might as well have skipped this ingredient totally. Most recipes that call for baking powder assume you are using a double acting version, which her version was not. Also, she didn’t allow it to rest before baking, which would have given the yeast a moment or three to rise a bit before baking. As it turned out, we had reasonably tasty teething biscuits.