Research Article

The Effects of the Use of Different

Flours in a Bread Recipe
Written By: Geoffrey Steiner

Abstract:
For this project I experimented with bread and the use of different flours. The flours I
used were Red Rose Un-Bleached White, Hungarian Whole Wheat, and Hodgson Mill Rye flour.
What I was looking for in doing this experiment was a difference in the rise height in the same
container, sourness, fluffiness, taste, and looks. I found that adding different types of flour
drastically changed the bread at all stages. The white flour was what I was expecting and acted
as it usually does in the recipe I used, meaning it was smooth and sticky. The wheat flour was a
much more firm than usual dough and required a lot more force to knead, but was a drier
dough. The rye flour was a very sticky dough, as well as a very pliable dough.
Through a short survey I found plenty of qualitative data through my peers. The data
includes information on the sourness, fluffiness, tastiness, and looks of each bread. I also found
a small amount of qualitative data during a rising period. During that rising period I found the
difference in growth of the yeast by measuring with a ruler to see the before and after difference
in height.

Introduction:
Bread is something that I have
enjoyed making for a decent amount of
time. The first loaf I made was in
elementary school. I have had a lot of
experience making bread and still dont
know the effects of using different flours. I
think that using different flours will mean
changes in rise time, sourness, overall
taste, and how the bread looks because the
different flours change both physically and
chemically.
The major chemical reactions are
found in the fermentation process. This
process is completely dependent on yeast.
There are two states that yeast can produce
in the aerobic state and the anaerobic state.
In the aerobic state it produces mainly
carbon dioxide. This is the state bread
makers want in order to use it as a
leavening agent. In the anaerobic state it
produces a lot more alcohol, thus the use
for brewers. It does this through eating
saccharides. There are plenty of these
saccharides in flour and sweeteners.
For this experiment I will be using 3
different flours as my independent variables.
These flours are unbleached white flour as
a control, whole wheat flour, and whole rye
flour. The dependents will be rise time,
fluffiness, sourness, tastiness, and look.
The recipe I will use is the normal Tassajara
Yeasted Bread from my Tassajara Bread
Book. I will be making a half batch in order
to save flour. This recipe uses the sponge
method for making the bread. For this
method I have to first mix the ingredients
(shown below) and then let that sit. By
doing this I get the yeast reproducing at a
faster rate and producing more gluten to
help with the kneading. Using the sponge

method also means that there is two steps

to the process. Step one has the following
ingredients.
I.
1 cups lukewarm water
tablespoons dry yeast
2 tablespoons
sweetening(honey,
molasses, or brown sugar)
cup dry milk(omitted)
2 cups white flour
What I am showing is a half batch. I
added tablespoon more sweeter because
it speeds up the yeast even more. The 2
cups flour will change to be mixtures of all
the flours I used. In my case the three
mixtures are 2 cups white, 1 cup white and
1 cup wheat, and 1 cup white and 1 cup rye.
After mixing the ingredients together the
sponge is allowed to rise for 30 min. Once
the rising period is done I move onto the
ingredients for step two.
II.
2 teaspoons salt
3 tablespoons oil
1 cups white flour
cup additional white
flour for kneading
The first step to the second part of
the sponge method is to 'fold' in the salt and
oil. You do this by sprinkling all of the salt
and oil over the sponge and then 'folding'
the sponge inward to incorporate both.
After the incorporation of the salt and oil you
start to add flour to the sponge. The flour is
added a cup at a time. In my case I had
to add of each flour to make it half and
half as desired meaning I had to add cup
and cup of both flours. All of the
necessary flour was fully mixed in I removed

the dough from the bowl and began

kneading. For this step I had to use cup
of each flour for the kneading. After the
kneading was done I let the dough rise for
40 min. After the rising period was done I
formed the loaves and placed them into preoiled bread pans to let rise again for 25 min.
Following the final rise period I applied the
egg wash to the top and cooked at 325
degrees Fahrenheit for 50 min. As long as
the final results did not have any charring or
burns of any kind I would be happy with the
product.
My hypotheses are as follow:
1. I think the wheat flour will rise the
fastest because it has what I think is
the best mixture for reproducing
yeast, and the rye will rise the
second fastest because it has the
second best.
2. I also think that the rye will be the
sourest and the wheat and white
would tie in sourness due to the fact
that rye is used in sourdoughs.
3. I believe that the wheat will look the
best and the rye the worst because
of the difference in the look of the
flour right now.
4. My final hypothesis is that the
fluffiest will be the white flour only
mixture and the least will be the rye.
5. Personally the rye is probably going
to taste the best for me, but thats
my opinion not others(not including
this as an hypothesis).

Methods:
For this experiment I will be using
the directions from my Tassajara Bread
Book to make a bread from three different
flours(see Introduction for recipe). Again

these flours are unbleached white, whole

wheat, and rye. I am only going to change
half of the total amount of flour needed. For
example the one with the white flour will
have purely white flour whereas another will
be half white and half rye. The only
changes to the original recipe are to
decrease the rise times: from 45 to 30 min.
in the first step and 50 to 40 in the second
step. I will also be making each bread a
half batch as shown in the introduction
section of this article.
The dependent variables for this
experiment are rise height, sourness,
fluffiness, taste, and look. If we see a
difference in rise it could be indicative to a
higher concentration of yeast foods like
saccharides. The variables sourness,
fluffiness, taste, and look are there to show
the difference the flour has in qualitative
data and which type of bread people would
prefer to eat.
I will measure the rise height by
placing a ruler straight up and down in the
sponge at the beginning and end of a 30
minute rising period to get the height
difference after 30 minutes. I will also
complete a taste test with my peers that will
include an online form where I can collect
qualitative data on the qualitative
dependents which are taste, sourness,
fluffiness, and look. The online form is a
google form online I will use to complete the
taste test. This form is going to be posted
on Steves DP.

Results:
Qualitative Data:

Figure 4

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

The figures 1-4 are from the data I collected

from the survey I created. There were 32
people who took the survey after eating my
breads. Figure 1 shows the scale of
sourness for my breads. The sourest being
bread C with the rye flour, and the least sour
being bread A. Figure 2 shows the
difference in fluffiness across the different
breads. Bread A was the fluffiest, and bread
C was the least. Figure 3 shows how
people thought each bread looked. A
looked the best probably due to its golden
brown crest and C looked the worst as
hypothesized. Figure 4 shows the rating of
the taste. Bread A won both the tastiest and
the in between whereas bread C was
definitely the least tasty.

Quantitative Data:

Figure 5

Figure 6
Above is the quantitative data I
collected. The only quantitative data I
collected was about the rise height
difference in the same bowl, after the same
amount of time. The reason I put them in
the same bowl is to somewhat control the
volume, but still be able to measure the
height. Both Figure 5 and 6 show the
change in rise height, just in different ways.
Figure 5 shows it through a line graph from
starting height to final height, whereas
Figure 6 shows only the overall difference in
rise height across the breads.

Discussion:
After the results came out I was
happy to see that the flours had made a
difference in the cooked bread. However, I
also realized the differences in the dough. I
found that the white flour, or A, was the
easiest to work with in this recipe, meaning
that it kneaded easily and rose the fastest. I
googled white unbleached flour nutritional
facts and this website came up
http://goo.gl/oInuSD. It is a site that has all
of the flours I used summed up and put into
numerical ratings. The rating I used is the
completeness rating. This rating is based
on the amount of 'completeness' in a way of
how many essential nutrients you will get
out of eating them. The white flour got the
worst rating out of all of them. It was rated
at 33 out of 100 for its completeness score.
The wheat, or B, was the hardest to
work with seeing as it had a very tough
dough that did not want to easily knead and
required a lot of force to do so. I think that
this had the strongest dough due to the
higher concentration of gluten in it which
binds together to form a polymer chain.
Dough mixing properties, dough strength
and extensibility can be understood in terms
of the extension of large glutenin molecules
giving rise to rubber elasticity and to the
presence of molecular entanglements which
contribute strength and extensibility to
dough systems. -The Abstract of the
Journal of Cereal Science. This flour got a
48 out of 100 completeness score on the
nutrition site.
Finally that the Rye, or C, was the
most fun to work with, the dough was the
stickiest, however the most enjoyable after
having to deal with the wheat dough. I think
that it was super pliable and thus more

sticky due to the lack in gluten of rye. It is

also the nutritional sites highest rated flour
out of all the flour I used. Getting the
highest completeness score at 56 out of
100.
Most of my hypotheses were fairly
accurate. Pertaining to the first hypothesis I
found that the white rose the fastest, the
wheat in the middle, and the rye was the
slowest(Figure 5). There is room for
improvement on this test. What I should
have done is checked the height at different
times. The hard part about measuring the
speed of growth for a fungi like yeast is that
it has a doubling time instead of a linear
time. So say I looked at around 15 minutes.
I should have supposedly seen a number in
between the start and end and had more of
a curved line graph because yeast grows
like we do. If you have seen a population
growth chart of humans you see an
exponential growth function because we
double reproduction if there is more of us. It
is the same with yeast. Another way I could
have improved this test was by having the
bread done on different days. By doing it all
in one day I had to wait for the first sponge
to rise before I could put the second in so
that I could keep the bowl the same, thus
the difference in starting height shown in
Figure 5.
The second hypothesis about
sourness is illustrated through Figure 1. As
you can see I was right with the first portion
of this hypothesis and bread C with the rye
flour was the sourest, however the white
and wheat did not tie for the same
sourness. The survey gave me the
information that bread B was more sour
than bread A.

The third hypothesis I got right on

the nose. Bread A with the white flour did
look the best and the rye the worst. This
was interesting none the less. I put egg
wash on top of all the breads, cooked them
and only one came out with that golden
sheen. That sheen belonged only to bread
A. The other breads came out only with the
same basic color they had before they were
cooked. If you think about it the main
reason that happens is because the white
flour has the highest saccharide
concentration. Those saccharides reacted
with the amino acids in the wash to perform
the maillard reaction which is the reason
that browning happens in the first place.
The more saccharides there are the better
the reaction.
The fourth and final hypothesis
about the fluffiness was correct as well.
The survey found that the fluffiest was the
white bread dough and the most dense was
the rye bread. This is most definitely due to
the rise time of each of the breads. As
shown in Figure 5 the white flour rose the
fastest and the rye the slowest. The faster
a dough rises the more fluffy it will be
because of the higher amounts of carbon
dioxide from the yeast.

Conclusion:
After all of the experimentation I
found that the flour in a bread recipe
changes the way every part about the bread
acts. It changes how large a dough can get
within a certain amount of time via yeast.
There are multiple differences in the dough
itself: stickiness, toughness, elasticity. After
cooking there is only one bread that gets
the golden brown shine from egg wash.
They all have different fluffiness, sourness,
tastiness, and looks as shown in Figures 14.

Overall this was a good experiment.

I collected plenty of both quantitative and
qualitative data about how flour changes the
way bread acts. If I were going to look any
further into this topic I would look more into
the rise height because it is supposed to
look more like an exponential growth
function. I would also change the variable
to rise volume because I believe it to be a
better way to measure the growth of the
yeast. I would do this by setting it in a pie
pan that has a wide cylindrical shape so that
the yeast could get plenty of oxygen and I
could measure the volume of growth fairly
easily.

References:
1. Brown, Edward Espe. The Tassajara

Bread Book. Boston, Massachusetts:

SHAMBALA PUBLICATIONS,
1970. Print.
2. Nast, Cond. "Nutrition Facts."

Analysis for Rye Flour, Dark. SELF,

1 Feb. 2014. Web. 24 May 2016.
3. Nast, Cond. "Nutrition Facts."

Analysis for Wheat Flour, White, Allpurpose, Enriched, Bleached. SELF,

1 Jan. 2014. Web. 24 May 2016.
4. Nast, Cond. "Nutrition Facts." And

Analysis for Wheat Flour, Wholegrain. SELF, 1 Feb. 2014. Web. 24

May 2016.
5. Singh, H., and F. MacRitchie.

"Application of Polymer Science to

Properties of Gluten." Research
Gate. Research Gate, May 2001.
Web. 24 May 2016.