Sift: The Elements of Great Baking

1.

All About Flour

Conjure up an image of a stereotypical baker and I bet you see someone surrounded by a floating cloud of white dust. Flour is just a veritable trademark of the profession.

From toasty whole-wheat to earthy ryes, bright white cake to hardy bread flours, the flour we use is an excellent jumping-off point, laying a foundation for great bakes to come. Getting to know flour is essential because it’s often the parameter by which we understand recipes. It regularly gets the top billing for our bakes, and its influence extends far beyond flavor. Flour determines the structure and character of our bakes because it contains two of the most significant structure providers in baking: gluten and starch.

These two titans are key to the crackle of a baguette, the chew of a cinnamon bun, and the crunch of a well-baked pie crust. To get the best out of flour, we need to learn how to coax out these characteristics, when to push it and when to let it be.

In this chapter, we’ll look at the way we use flour to build structure, the techniques that underpin it and understand when it’s best to push it and when we should just leave it alone. We’ll also learn to speak flour, from demystifying protein content to decoding baker’s percentages. Let’s get into it.

The story of flour

Flour refers to any grain that has been ground into a fine powder. From rye to rice, buckwheat to chickpea, tapioca to corn, the range of flours is huge. But there is one dominating force in the flour world: wheat.

Wheat is one of the world’s most widely grown and consumed grains. Evidence of domesticated wheat goes all the way back to 9000 BC in the Middle East, and its importance and relevance are yet to wane. Millions of acres around the world are dedicated to this crop. But not all wheat is created equal: the two main types are hard and soft.

The terroir (a word that refers to the unique environmental factors of an area, including soil, topography, and climate) significantly impacts the wheat grown in certain regions. Wheat grown in harsher climates with more dramatic winters and summers—like Canada and Eastern Europe—tends toward hard wheat with high protein content, while wheat that thrives naturally in the UK tends to be softer with a lower protein content.

Softer wheat works well for cakes, cookies, and biscuits, but when it comes to bread, we tend to reach for imported flour with a high proportion of gluten. These imported flours produce lofty loaves that align with our idea of what bread should look like. In recent years, these standards have shifted as more bakers seek local grains and challenge our idea of what responsibly sourced, good-for-you bread looks (and tastes!) like.

A kernel of wheat has three parts: the endosperm, the bran, and the germ. During the milling process, wheat kernels are cracked and finely ground. It’s then sifted in stages, the flour becoming more refined each time. Eventually, the bran and germ are entirely filtered out, resulting in white flour.

This white wheat flour is almost entirely comprised of the endosperm. The endosperm is the part of wheat rich in protein (which leads to gluten) and starch, but it is not nutritionally rich. Most of the goodness and flavor—the fiber, minerals, and vitamins—come from the bran and germ. Flour that contains endosperm, bran, and germ is known as whole-wheat flour. It is coarser and more flavorful than white flour, and more absorbent, meaning recipes made with whole-wheat flour are adjusted to contain more water.

What are heritage grains?

You may have noticed bakeries adding heritage grains to their breads, buns, and cakes.

These are grains that were grown in the local area before the introduction of mass selective plant breeding in the early 20th century. These heritage grains tend to be forgotten varieties of wheat, barley, oat, or rye and have now begun to be reintroduced. Einkorn is a popular heritage grain in the UK—it is one of the earliest cultivated plants, with evidence it was domesticated some 10,000 years ago!

A peek inside the kernel

Let’s talk gluten

One of the key ways to categorize flour in baking is in relation to its strength. We can find out the strength of flour by looking at its protein content. This is important because, when we add water, these proteins emerge from their dehydrated hibernation to create gluten. The amount of protein in wheat flour tells us how much gluten it can develop or how strong a dough will be. The easiest way to check the gluten content is to check the nutritional table on the back of a bag of flour—the protein value will reveal everything.

The amount of gluten in the flour should be thought of as the capacity or potential for gluten because gluten is not implicit—gluten needs to be built! There are a few ways to do this, which we’ll cover in this chapter.

Once gluten is developed, it will stubbornly spring back into shape. This impressive, flexible network can capture gases, like CO2 and steam, and will help your bakes hold shape when baked. Without gluten acting as a net, bread could not rise effectively—the gases produced by yeast fermentation would just escape! (See How Things Rise on this page.)

Understanding protein content

Protein Content Range (%)

When flour meets water

Take a bag of buckwheat flour and check out the nutritional table on the back—it might have a very high protein content. But you can’t make a lofty loaf with just buckwheat flour. Why?! Well, it’s not the right mixture of proteins. So, what IS the right mix?

The proteins glutenin (the strength protein) and gliadin (the stretch protein) in wheat flour bind together to form gluten in the presence of water. Without water, gluten cannot form. As soon as wheat flour is hydrated, the glutenin and gliadin unfold (aka denature) and form gluten.

A series of sticky bonds develop between adjacent gluten proteins, creating a spring-like network that forms the backbone of many of our baked goods. From a fragile, oily bubble puffing excitedly out of focaccia to a satisfyingly stretchy and supple milk bread, we have gluten to thank.

The deal with alcohol

Ever seen a recipe that suggests a splash of vodka in your pie dough or batter? Well, there’s a method to this madness. Because gluten only forms in the presence of water, by using a high percentage alcohol like vodka, which is only 60% water, you are reducing the proportion of liquid contributing to the gluten development.

Even though vodka will make your dough look wet, ethanol does not hydrate the proteins! This results in a dough that is as easy to roll out as one made with 100% water but with implicitly less gluten, resulting in a more tender final product.

The windowpane test

A failsafe way to judge how well your gluten has developed is by pinching off a small piece of dough and stretching it. This is known as the windowpane test.

How we mix our ingredients has a major impact on how gluten develops. Folding, the gentlest technique we reserve for batters like genoise sponge, results in the least amount of gluten formation. Whereas whisking or stirring will encourage more gluten to form, increasing the interaction between proteins. Vigorous or continuous kneading or mixing will result in the most gluten formation.

Stages of gluten development

The dough will not stretch without breaking

Dough stretches but tears easily

The dough stretches easily to a very thin pane

Dough is sticky and cannot be stretched

Mechanical Intervention

We can speed up the formation of gluten by mechanically agitating and mixing the dough, also known as kneading. During the kneading process, the proteins are stretched and realigned, allowing for more opportunities for bonds and links to be made—it’s like chaotic speed dating. The kneading action also incorporates air, which strengthens the bonds. Eventually, the bonds are put under so much stress that they break and the dough relaxes.

This has the effect of the dough becoming more and more elastic as we continually stretch the gluten and force the bonds to break and reform. Gluten also forms in the direction it is kneaded. Bakers often turn the dough as they knead it to ensure that the gluten is developed evenly. This is also why we rotate the dough between each turn when we laminate croissants and puff pastry. (See How Things Rise on this page.)

This is why recipes will often be precise about the mixing method. It’s also why a cake method may ask you to mix the flour until it is just combined, while a bread recipe may have you knead the dough for upward of 15 minutes. The former is to ensure excess gluten isn’t formed, while the latter is to maximize gluten formation.

When it comes to timings, recipes will guide you on how long to mix the dough to develop gluten, but you must learn to trust your senses. In any case, with yeasted doughs, you must not allow your dough to rise (also known as the bulk development stage) until the gluten is developed. (To find out why, see How Things Rise on this page.)

Kneading techniques

Classic

Best for low-medium hydration doughs,

e.g., flatbreads, bagels

Using a work surface for resistance, repeatedly push the dough away from you with the heels of your hands, then fold it back over itself. Repeat.

Slap and fold

Best for medium-high hydration doughs,

e.g., milk bread, brioche

Place the dough on a clean work surface. Slide your hands under the dough and lift in the middle to release from the work surface. Bring the dough up (it’ll hang a bit) and slap the bottom half on the counter. Stretch it up slightly (it should have stuck) and quickly fold the dough in half over itself. Rotate it 90 degrees, then repeat.

Stretch and fold

Best for high-hydration doughs,

e.g., focaccia

This is usually reserved for wet doughs that cannot hold their own shape. It is a very gentle method. Stretch each corner of the dough into the center, lift the dough up, stretch gently, and place it back down into the container.

Rubaud

Best for high-hydration doughs,

e.g., ciabatta

This is usually reserved for wet doughs that cannot hold their own shape. Using a dough scraper or your hand as a flat paddle, repeatedly lift, stretch, and turn the dough, to act as a mechanical mixer.

Autolyse—sweet nothing

You know that phrase work smarter, not harder? Well, let me introduce you to autolyse. Autolyse is a period after mixing flour and water when you do…nothing. We step away from the mixing bowl and allow the flour to fully hydrate and form gluten without us lifting a finger. This could be anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour. The word autolyse is French for self-digestion or self-breaking down. It’s derived from the Greek auto, meaning self, and lysis, meaning to break down.

During this time, the structure (by way of gluten) begins to form without any intervention. The key here is time. With enough time, flour and water will develop significant gluten—kneading simply speeds this up. It’s also a much gentler way of distributing water through a dough, rather than fully working it in during the mix.

Processes similar to autolyse happen when we rest other baked goods. For example, when we rest pie dough in the fridge, water distributes itself evenly throughout the dough and gluten forms, making it much easier to work with and roll out.

Strength vs. stretch

When making dough, there are two properties to consider: elasticity and extensibility. Although they may seem similar on the surface, they are actually opposites. Compare paper-thin filo pastry to a puffy batch of buns. Though both are made of wheat flour, we are seeking different characteristics in each.

Elasticity means your dough will go back to its shape/can hold a shape. In contrast, extensibility refers to how much the dough can stretch without consideration of it returning to form. In fact, a very extensible dough, even if it can stretch over your entire table, is actually considered weak.

You can think of these simply as strength vs. stretch. Doughs that excel in strength may have a chewy final texture (think pizza dough or bread), while doughs that excel in stretch will be tender and fine (think filo pastry).

The importance of relaxation

There’s a lot we can learn from dough and one of those things is the importance of relaxation. When dough relaxes, it becomes extensible, aka more stretchy. All the strength (and elasticity) created during the kneading process adjusts to its new capacity. Imagine gluten as a magical rubber band, which, over time, learns to accommodate its new range without sacrificing elasticity.

If the dough isn’t allowed time to relax, especially if it is high in gluten, it will be hard to shape and could become malformed while baking. For intensively stretched doughs, like croissants or puff pastry, at least 45 minutes is recommended for the dough to relax.

This is also relevant during the mix. If you are mixing a high-hydration dough that needs intensive kneading, taking rest periods, 2–3 minutes every 5–10 minutes, will give your dough a chance to relax, resulting in improved flexibility. Dough is not unlike a muscle after a workout. Like muscles, gluten networks become tight and tense after the kneading, so allowing the dough to relax means the proteins can untangle and loosen, making the dough easier to work with.

The deal with no-knead doughs

No-knead bread is a category of hands-off doughs that slowly develop strength over time. It is the perfect example of a trade-off in baking: effort (not having to knead) vs. time (24–36 hours). Pioneered by Jim Lahey, in its simplest form you simply mix flour, water, and yeast together and allow the dough to develop for 24–36 hours without touching it.

It’s essentially one huge autolyse with added yeast. This is usually reserved for sourdough bread. (See How Things Rise on this page.)

So, what exactly is happening here? Well, the enzymes present in the flour begin to break down the proteins, which make the dough really stretchy and developed. As the yeast processes the sugars, the CO2 expands, which has the effect of very gently kneading and stretching the dough.

Flour power

Most doughs need a yin/yang mix of strength and stretch. Although our gut reaction when preparing a dough that requires a lot of volume or stretching may be to use bread flour, this isn’t always necessary.

Recipes that require your dough to rise and hold its shape will usually benefit from a higher protein flour, while recipes that only need to stretch can be made with all-purpose flour. You see, all-purpose flour isn’t so great at creating the sort of coiled-spring gluten network capable of trapping masses of CO2 that we need for bread. That’s where bread flour excels.

Though specific recipes will vary, here’s an overview of which flour characteristic dominates in various pastries.

Effects of flour

Baked goods made with all-purpose flour will have a softer, cakier, or fluffier texture, while baked goods made with bread flour will be crisper or chewier and have better definition after baking.

Swapping in flours

Almost all recipes calling for bread flour can be made with all-purpose flour by reducing the hydration by around 10%. Lower protein flour absorbs less water than higher protein flour. However, this swap will come at a cost. The resulting bake will be cakier and less springy in texture, spongy rather than springy. It will likely have a lower profile since there isn’t enough gluten to support a lofty structure.

On the other side of the spectrum, using whole-wheat flour has the opposite problem. Bran is highly absorbent, so you must increase the water in a recipe by 5–10%. Whole-wheat bread will also have a lower profile—all of the stuff (the bran and germ) will get in the way of long gluten chains developing.

So, you want to add whole-wheat to your dough?

Adding whole-wheat flour into doughs is a great way to add flavor and character to your recipes. But when it comes to bread, you run the risk of a flat, deflated end product thanks to the bran and germ slicing through gluten as it is forming. A way around this, taught to me by Master Baker Adam Sellar, is to sift your whole-wheat flour and separate out the bran.

You can then soak this bran in a little of the recipe’s liquid and reintroduce it later. This allows two things to happen: the sifted flour is left to adequately develop gluten without interference and the formerly stabby edges of the bran are somewhat neutralized. This way, you get all the benefits of flavor and nutrition from the bran without any headaches or concerns about proper gluten development in your dough.

A baker’s trick: toasting flour

A curious technique in the pastry kitchen is toasted flour. When you toast flour before using it in cakes, cookies, or breads, you bring out new flavor notes via the Maillard reaction (see Color on this page). In the same way you would roast a hazelnut or almond before using it, flour can benefit from the same process. Simply heat the flour in a pan until it darkens to a mahogany brown and has a nutty flavor—around 10 minutes. But at what cost? When you toast flour, you are scorching each grain, making it impossible for gluten to form—the proteins are denatured and thus unable to form bonds.

So, you should really consider toasted flour as having totally gluten-free properties. This doesn’t mean it is safe for people with Celiac disease! But you can use it for recipes that don’t strongly rely on gluten, though combining it with a portion of gluten-forming wheat flour is sensible if you plan to use it in cakes and pastries. See it in action in the chamomile and toasted flour chiffon cake on this page.

Decoding flour

Beyond strength, there are a few other ways to think about flour. Be it color, grain, or type, sometimes it’s a case of learning to speak bread. Depending on where you are in the world, flour will be referred to by different names. For example, the T French system uses a mixture of letters and numbers.

The T system classifies flour based on the amount of residue left after burning 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of flour. So old-school, but there is a reason. Flour is mainly composed of starch and sugars, which disappear when the flour is burned, leaving behind mineral content, such as bran or ash. Therefore, the lower the T number, for example T45, the softer the flour will be. On the other hand, the higher the T number, which can go up to T170, the less refined the flour will be, and the more it will contain whole wheat.

Cake flour

Approx. protein content: 7–8%

T class: T45

Details: Mild, neutral, slightly earthy

Rye flour

Approx. protein content: 8–16%

T class: T170 (whole-wheat)

Details: Dense texture, earthy, nutty flavor. Ranges from light to dark. Can be white or whole-wheat

All-purpose flour

Approx. protein content: 9–11%

T class: T55

Details: Mild, neutral, slightly earthy

Buckwheat flour

Approx. protein content: 10–12%

Details: Slightly sweet, nutty flavor

Whole-wheat flour

Approx. protein content: 10–14%

T class: T150

Details: Nutty, earthy flavor, high in fiber and nutrients

Semolina

Approx. protein content: 12–13%

Details: Coarse texture, slightly sweet. Derived from hard durum wheat

Bread flour

Approx. protein content: 12–14%

T class: T65

Details: Mild, neutral, slightly earthy

What is 00 flour?

00 flour, popular in Italian baking, refers to how finely flour is ground, rather than a particular grain or strength and it has a variable protein content.

The deal with cocoa

To adapt a dough to a cocoa flavor, you can swap a portion of the flour weight for cocoa powder, starting at about 10%. It will change the flavor of the bake and alter the texture. Cocoa powder is about 25% fat, so it cannot be treated like any other starch (see this page). It also absorbs more water than flour, so you need to increase the liquid in a recipe by 15%–20% to compensate for this.

Minimizing or maximizing gluten

Gluten is either the hero or the villain in the story, depending on what you are baking. For bread and buns, gluten is the hero. For tender cakes, it’s the villain! No matter what you are making, you should always stop to consider whether you want to minimize or maximize gluten development. Once you know that, you can figure out how to achieve it with the help of other ingredients. Here’s a guide on what to look out for.

Sugar

Sugar is highly hygroscopic, aka water-loving (see All About Sugar on this page). It competes with the flour for moisture, meaning it draws water away from the proteins, reducing the strength of the proteins network.

Minimize gluten: Add sugar before or at the same time as the flour.

Maximize gluten: Hold sugar back from initial mixing.

Fat

Fat inhibits gluten development. Because fat and water do not mix, the water has limited access to the flour if it is combined or coated with fat.

Liquid fats like oil help to lubricate the dough and help the dough feel stretchier, improving the extensibility without adding additional water.

Minimize gluten: Rub fat and flour together or use liquid fat to coat the flour before proceeding with the recipe.

Increase the overall amount of fat in the dough to limit the strength potential of the gluten network.

Maximize gluten: Hold fat back until gluten is somewhat developed.

Whole-wheat flour

Pieces of bran in whole-wheat flour act like little knives, cutting through the dough and literally slicing through strands of gluten. As a result of this, dough made with whole-wheat flour will have less volume.

Maximize gluten: Sift whole-wheat flour and soak bran, introducing the bran back in later after gluten is developed.

Salt

Improves gluten development, strengthening the bonds between proteins.

Maximize gluten: Add salt with flour.

pH

A slightly acidic environment is when gluten is happiest, but the gluten strength is reduced by lowering it too much (below 5) or increasing it above 7 (aka making it more alkaline).

Minimize gluten: Lower the pH of dough to weaken gluten and make the structure more tender, e.g., sour cream or buttermilk for acidic, or baking soda for more alkaline (see How Things Rise on this page).

Maximize gluten: Add a small amount of lemon juice or vinegar to your dough to lower pH slightly.

Time

The longer flour and water are left to develop gluten, the stronger the dough will become.

Minimize gluten: Mix briefly, and do not allow batter or dough to sit for long periods.

Maximize gluten: Allow the dough to rest or use a preferment (see How Things Rise on this page).

Alcohol

Alcohol will hydrate flour with a lower percentage of water, reducing gluten development and making a dough more tender or short.

Minimize gluten: Use a small amount of alcohol in place of the liquid in the dough.

Add-ins

Add-ins like herbs, nuts, or chocolate chips will get in the way of gluten formation.

Maximize gluten: Hold back until gluten is somewhat developed.

Starch

Starch is the unsung hero of flour and it is equally—if not more—responsible for the final structure of baked goods. Just think—flour comprises 70–75% starch compared to the 7–14% protein. If gluten is the best-selling author superstar of flour, then starch is the ghostwriter.

Starch is a carbohydrate and is the food source for yeast in fermented bread (see How Things Rise on this page) and when hydrated, it will thicken when heat is applied (see Texture on this page). This thickening process provides the main body and forms the structure for most of the bakes we know and love. That soft crumb of your favorite cake? You’ve got starch to thank for that. That crispy coating on your favorite fried snack? Starch, we love you!

Starch, however, only comes into its own when there’s enough water to interact with. When starch is mixed with water and heated, the granules absorb and swell, creating a mesh network and a thickened consistency. The water is effectively trapped, turning starch from gritty particles to soft ones. This irreversible process is known as gelatinization.

Gelatinization is one of the most important processes that happens again and again in baking. It links shiny bagels to choux pastry, milk bread to chocolate cake. Starch gelatinization begins at 149°F and is complete by 203°F, but we can track its various moves by looking closer at some of our favorite pastries.

Definition: Tangzhong

Tangzhong is a thick, gel-like paste made by heating flour and liquid, which is added to bread dough to increase moisture and create a soft and fluffy texture.

The humble potato

One way to increase the moisture in your dough is by adding your favorite starchy friend: the potato. Like a tangzhong, a cooked potato is a starch sponge stuffed with water. In fact, potato is one of the most effective starches at retaining water because the molecules are bigger and absorb and hold liquid more easily, as well as adding body to your dough, which makes it easier to handle. Since potatoes do not contain gluten, they effectively interrupt the firm gluten network, resulting in a squishier, softer bread, as well as imparting subtle flavor cues. You could also try pumpkin or sweet potato.

Adding bulk

In baking, bulk refers to the dry ingredients in a recipe. While this is usually wheat flour or sugar, other ingredients add this bulk to recipes without contributing gluten. In some recipes, you might wish to turn to alternative bulkers, like ground nuts or polenta, to help change the character of your bakes. These tend to create a different texture and add depth to your recipes.

Amount of flour

Canelé, this page; Choux Pastry, this page; Victoria Sponge, this page; Brioche, this page; Shortbread, this page; Focaccia, this page

Starch gelatinization in action

Bagels

In the case of bagels, starch gelatinization is responsible for that chewy crust. Before baking, bagels are boiled. As the dough hits the water, rapid gelatinization of the outer crust of the bagel occurs. As a result, a supple crust is formed. It is still a bit flexible, but it does set the bagel’s shape and reduces outward expansion during the bake, resulting in the dense, chewy middle.

Choux

For choux pastry, we gelatinize the flour by cooking it on the stovetop before adding the eggs. This is sometimes referred to as drying out the choux paste. To make sure you’ve gelatinized it, you can take the temperature of your paste with a probe thermometer. So long as it has reached 185°F, you’re in the clear. By gelatinizing the flour, we denature the proteins, which massively reduces the potential for gluten but does not remove it completely.

The choux paste is stretchy but not elastic, i.e., it won’t spring back, which works in our favor when baking the choux. The paste expands as the steam evaporates, and the shape is set by the starch and egg proteins setting.

Custard

Starch creates stable, thick, and unctuous mixtures in custard. Crème pâtissière, or pastry cream, gets its texture entirely from starch. Although the eggs coagulate, they mainly contribute flavor rather than texture.

Bread

Some breads, like squishy milk bread, call for a tangzhong, that is a portion of the recipe’s flour to be precooked, aka gelatinized, ahead of time. Pioneered by Yvonne Chen in The 65-degree Bread Doctor, she found that using this technique meant you could introduce a higher proportion of hydration into bread.

By pre-cooking the flour, we are essentially trapping hydration by keeping moisture busy with starch, effectively binding the water. This means we can add more hydration while keeping the bread manageable to work with and improving oven spring and texture with the added water and steam power.

Cakes

In cakes, starch gelatinization occurs as the internal temperature of the batter rises while baking. The starch gelatinizes around expanding air pockets as the bake progresses, providing the cake’s structure.

Pie fillings

Starch thickens and gels fruit juices as the pie bakes, resulting in sliceable fillings once cool. To go deeper, see Texture on this page.

Rice pudding

In the case of rice pudding, the rice absorbs milk and in turn releases starch into the liquid. This results in a thickened, creamy texture.

Baker’s percentages

There are plenty of ways to make sense of a recipe, but one of the most useful ways is through baker’s percentages. If seeing any symbol that remotely refers to math leaves you feeling riddled with anxiety, don’t worry. I’m here to guide you through it, and I promise you’ll feel good about it afterward. Baker’s percentages are a handy way of looking at recipes, breaking down each ingredient and its relative proportion to flour. For example, if we use 70g of water to 100g of flour, we would say the water has a baker’s percentage of 70%. In a recipe displayed in baker’s percentages, the flour will always be 100%.

An example of a baker’s percentage

Baker’s percentages are very useful for looking at recipes at a glance and building your own. When building bread recipes, the yeast and salt do not change radically, but the hydration—in the form of milk, eggs, or water—and fat (hi, brioche!) is where things begin to shift. The amount of hydration impacts the texture. A low hydration dough (50–60%) will have a denser, more even crumb with a lot of chew and hold its shape very well. When mixing, it will come together easily and may feel stiff or tight. It’s useful for doughs like babka or bagels.

As you increase the hydration, the dough gets wetter and wilder. As a result, it will have a softer, more tender crumb. It can also form erratic, glassy, open-crumb structures like focaccia. It can certainly be more challenging to handle—it will be stickier and take longer to develop significant gluten. What you hydrate the dough with also has an impact and is often where lean doughs become enriched. Lean doughs, such as pizza dough or baguettes, have little to no sugar or fat—just water, salt, and flour. When the dough is enriched, it has been bolstered with sugar, eggs, or fat to create various textures and flavors to make it more fluffy and soft, like brioche and cinnamon buns. Enriched doughs tend to have a higher proportion of sugar for flavor. For more information on how that impacts the dough and the rise, see All About Sugar on this page and How Things Rise on this page.

Lean vs. enriched breads

Enriched

Lean

* Olive oil is added only during the folding and baking process, so even though focaccia does contain fat, it is closer to a lean bread!

Yeast in enriched breads

Enriched breads will typically use more yeast than lean breads to accommodate the enriching ingredients, namely sugar. Although sugar at first boosts the yeast, anything above 5% will ultimately slow down the fermentation process because sugar, being highly hygroscopic, steals water from everything, including yeast cells!

Hydration ranges of baked goods

The Last Crumb

With its delicate balance of protein and starch, flour provides a wonderful and expandable canvas in baking and its ability to bind, stretch, and thicken is instrumental to the success of our cakes, breads, and pastries.

Learning how to minimize or maximize these properties introduces us to a world of textures, though the inherent flavor of grains should also be celebrated. In fact, flour shines the most in our simplest recipes. With the addition of water, yeast, and salt, it impressively houses a cacophony of bubbles in a way that no other ingredient can, and produces textures that are crisp, chewy, airy, and soft at the same time. Flour is the solid foundation that other ingredients can rely on. Without the net of starch or gluten, where would other ingredients be?

Think of it as the designated driver of the friend group, staying steady and keeping all the ingredients in place while allowing them to flourish.

2.

All About Sugar

Sugar and the pursuit of sweet things is almost certainly the first introduction we all had to the world of baking. Stolen spoonfuls of Nutella, winning the bid against your siblings to lick the spoon from the cake mix, the sticky fingers post jam doughnuts from the bakery, chocolate cornflake cakes sold at the school fair. Sugar is so ubiquitous with sweetness that people often think it is a one-note ingredient, only adding flavor to your bakes. But we are selling sugar short.

Whether you realize it or not, sugar is out there holding up cake structures, making your cookies tender while simultaneously making the crusts of those same cookies crispy, improving color, stabilizing foams, and making your ice creams smooth. Heated enough, it will transform into one of baking’s most-loved ingredients: caramel (see Color on this page). It must be exhausting to be sugar. But what exactly is it, and why is it so busy all the time?

This chapter will explore the myriad ways that sugar ingratiates itself in our bakes. From its unique and dominating relationship with water to the extraordinary variety of types, from ones that crunch to ones that flow, we’ll see how getting the balance of sugar right is the key to a successful bake.

What is sugar?

Sugar is the generic name for all sweet-tasting carbohydrates in the food world. Think of sugar as the family name, scrawled at the top of an incredibly complex and long family tree, which comprises all sorts