How to make easy bread

I’ve been working all week on an easy bread recipe to help you through these difficult times. We must avoid going out to the streets as much as possible, for that reason I have made this post on How to make easy bread. The fact of buying bread is one of the most motivating things for us to go out to the street, but with today’s recipe, we will be able to reduce it a lot and limit it only to essential moments.

To make these loaves we won’t need special flours, nor ingredients that are difficult to find. In fact we can use those flours that we have at home and adapt the recipe according to our needs. Rather, to the needs of the flour we use where we will have to pay special attention to the final hydration of the dough. Which is what will vary.

I want to make a little note, they are not baguettes, let’s not get confused because it is not the same.

In my case I have used a flour bought in the supermarket, but you can use any flour from the supermarket. A flour with strength W=200 or plain flour with strength W=170-180, for example. If the strength of the flour is not detailed, we should know that plain flour has a protein amount of 10-11% and a bread flour has a protein amount that can vary between 12-14%.

I leave you a small table where you can see the amount of protein in each flour and the “optimal” use for it:

• 8-9% -> pastry/cake flour, ideal for making cookies or pastries such as sponge cakes, for example
• 10-11% -> plain flour, ideal for breads, ciabattas…
• 12-14% -> bread flour, ideal for all those doughs that have butter, milk, eggs… I mean, enriched doughs.

When we are going to elaborate a recipe for bread, or doughs in general, in the ingredients we can find the term “strength” indicated as W in many cases. But what does it mean that a flour has strength?

A strong flour is a flour with a high protein content, this does not mean that all the flours with a high protein index are strength flours. The strength of a flour is given by the union of 3 characteristics:

• Extensibility
• Elasticity
• Tenacity

What is each of these characteristics and what values do they bring to our dough?

• EXTENSIBILITY: It is the capacity of the dough to be stretched. If a dough has good extensibility it will not cost us any work to stretch it. This characteristic will allow us to form pieces easily.
• ELASTICITY: The capacity of the dough to return to its initial state after being stretched.
• TENACITY: The ability of a dough to resist the stretching process. This characteristic influences the capacity to lengthen a dough to be formed.

What happens if I have a flour with a strength greater than W=200 and I want to work with the specified strength?

In this case we can combine two types of flour, one with a strength of W=300, for example, and a plain flour of W=170, for example, to achieve a strength equal to or similar to that detailed in the recipe.

How can we achieve that?

With a formula that helps us to calculate the amount of flour to be mixed in relation to the strength of each one and the final strength we want to achieve. I found this formula on the website of Panarras.com, which unfortunately is no longer operational.

Using 2 types of flour we can create our own medium strength flour. If, for example, we have at home a weak flour of W=80 and a strong flour of W=300, I can get a medium-strength flour of W=200.

To do this we would need to follow the formula below:

• Percentage of strong flour: 100 x (W – Wf) / (WF – Wf)
• Percentage of weak flour: 100 x (WF – W) / (WF – Wf)

Where:

• W= the strength that we want to achieve
• WF= bread flour used
• Wf= weak flour used

We see it with an example applying the previous data:

• Strength flour I’m going to need: 100 x (200-80) / (300-80)= 54,5%
• Weak flour that I’m going to need: 100 x (300-200) / (300-80)= 45,5%

If the recipe we are going to make uses a total of 500 g of flour W=200, we should calculate 54.5% of 250 g to know how much flour strength we need and 45.5% of 250 g to know how much weak flour we need. We would calculate both quantities, put them together and we would have our strong flour of W=200.

And, if I don’t have flours to calculate the strength that is detailed?

In that case we can use the flour we have at home. For example, common wheat flour with a protein percentage between 10-11%.

In this case what we will have to take into account is the final dough’s hydration, because it will vary. As it has less strength, it will admit less water for the consistency we need to achieve to make these loaves. So here’s what we’re going to do.

• The amount of ingredients to make poolish, whatever flour we use, is the same. We will follow the same quantities as detailed in the recipe.
• With respect to the final dough, what will vary is the amount of water.

I remind you that a dough is always rectified with water, never in life with flour. Why? Because the baker’s percentage is based on the total amount of flour in a recipe. That means that the rest of the ingredients are in proportion to the percentage detailed in the recipe based on the final amount of flour. If we add more flour to prevent the dough from being too moist, we are destroying the final formula. Why? Because the salt will no longer be in proportion, nor will the yeast… That’s why it’s important not to rectify with flour. NEVER. It’s one thing to dust the table with flour to handle the dough and quite another to add 50 g more flour because the dough was too sticky.

• When you are about to do the autolysis to make the dough, if the flour you have at home is not strong enough, add less water than specified in the recipe. For example, instead of adding the 265 g of water that we are going to use, add 215-220 g. If the dough is very dense, after doing the autolysis, then we can rectify it with water. There will always be time to add more, but we will never be able to remove it.
• Did you say to observe for consistency after doing the autolysis? Yes, that’s it. The reason is that the flour takes a long time to hydrate and that means that the final consistency will not be the same when you cover the dough to make the rest as when you come back to work with it.
• Once you are ready to add the poolish, yeast and salt, you can see what the consistency is and whether or not you need to add more water. Do not worry if you do not achieve the same hydration as in the video. It can be slightly higher, slightly lower, but the result will be good. You will never make two equal breads and each one you make will allow you to learn a little more about them.

By the way, what is a poolish?

It is one of the first commercial yeast preferments invented at the end of the 19th century. It originated in Poland and therefore its name refers to Polish bakers.

The use of poolish makes the breads lighter in texture and less acidic in taste, much softer than those made from sourdough. It is a preferred hydrated ingredient between 100% and 125%. This already lets us know that it will be very liquid and very sticky in consistency.

To make it we only need flour, water, a small proportion of yeast (it will always depend on the time of fermentation that we are going to use and the temperature) and no salt. We must let it ferment between 4 and 14 hours at room temperature. It tends to weaken the gluten resulting in a soft crumb.

The amounts of yeast will be based on % of the weight of the flour in the poolish:

• For a fermentation of 3 hours, 0.5% of dry yeast is recommended
• 6 hours 0.23% of dry yeast
• 8 hours 0.17%
• 12 hours between 0,03 and 0,05 % (the most recommended since it favours the improvement of the taste and aromas)

If we use fresh yeast we only have to multiply by 3 the previous result

The perfect point for our poolish will be when it looks flat on the surface and very bubbly, at which time it will have matured. While it is fermenting, you can see that the surface is domed or vaulted. At this point it will not be fully matured yet.

This preferement gives extensibility to the dough so it is perfect if we want to get a dough easy to stretch and shape, with alveoli inside.

The amount of yeast in the recipe is very small and my scale only weighs 1 gram…

It’s all right.

If we use dry yeast, we weigh one gram and divide that amount into 5 equal parts (or more or less) and keep one of them. If using fresh yeast, weigh 1 gram, divide into two equal parts and add a pinch of the other to one of them. Solved 🙂

Process of elaboration, easy bread .

In the video I show you how to do the whole process by hand since not everybody has a dough mixer, but that does not mean that you cannot make bread. In fact, in my online bread workshop I teach my students how to work like this. The reason is very simple, it is very important to know the texture, consistency and evolution of a dough in your hands. Only this way you will know well how it behaves and how it changes, in order to understand it.

Once you know how to “listen” to it, you can use the KitchenAid as much as you want. It’s a great assistant, of course. But it’s super important to understand the doughs and that can only be done by touch.

If you use a stand mixer or kneader, follow the same process that I detail only by kneading in it. Always at speed 1, and also at rest so as not to overheat the dough by friction.

I recommend you to be very careful with the dough whenever you handle it. Both in the division of the pieces and in the pre-shaping and shaping. I prefer you to be careful and take a little longer than to go at full speed and spoil it.

Pre-shaping and shaping of the loaves.

Normally, when we preshape a dough, we usually make a round piece. In this case it doesn’t make much sense because our purpose is to achieve an elongated piece. For that reason the pre-shaping is very different from what we usually do or are used to do. In my case I followed the process that Jérémy Ballester does to pre-shape and shape baguettes. You can see it both in his Instagram profile and in my video.

This step is delicate, but not impossible. By this I mean that we don’t have to shape a churro as if we were working with plasticine. By kneading the dough to infinity, we can damage the crumb. Besides, it is never good to manipulate an already fermented dough to excess.

To rise the loaves I have used a linen, which many of you may not have. But that’s okay too. You can use a large cotton cloth or even a tablecloth. It will do the same function. Remember to sprinkle lightly with flour so that the dough doesn’t stick during the final proof.

After all this process, we arrive at the moment of shaping and baking the pieces.

We must have zero terror here. What’s the worst that can happen? That they don’t look perfect? Well, they may not be very pretty, but they will be very good and will allow you to learn for the next ones you make.

Scoring is one of the most frightening things you can do, but it is nothing more than cutting the surface of the bread. It is much worse for a surgeon 😉

It is important that you make clean, straight cuts that are not bent and slightly deep. By this I mean that they should not be superficial because the oven-spring will not appear. But neither should we make a cut that reaches the middle of the loaf. About 0.5 cm will be enough.

Finish the baking process, this must be done with steam during the first minutes, then without it and finally we will finish with convection to achieve a crispy and well-browned crust 😀

What if I want to have the bread baked in the middle of the day?

In that case you will have to prepare the poolish first thing in the morning, prepare the dough and get to the point where we make bulk fermentation. Once it is inside the container, leave it overnight in the fridge (retard in cold).

The next morning, temper the dough for about 1 and 1/2 hours or 2 hours before working with it. A cold dough is difficult to shape and we will not carry out a properly final proof. And, after all this, continue with the rest of the process as detailed in the recipe.