$\"Fragen\"$ A reader of \u201cHefe und mehr\u201d asked me to create a categorie for Tips and Basics about Baking, to make it more easy to find necessary information about baking bread. I\u2019m working at the moment on a little series about Bread baking theorie but until I am satisfied with the my preparations, I offered that she could send me her questions per email or comment.\u00a0 And she has a lot of questions, so I decided to sort them a little bit and publish my answer here in my blog because they may be of interest for other reader, too.<\/p>\n

Today we have a look at ingredients: which amout of yeast and water should I use, what are the benefits of egg in a dough and should I use Butter or oil?<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Much or less yeat –\u00a0 does it make a diffrent? <\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n
If you add a lot of yeast like many recipes asked for (about 9% yeast) bulk fermentation and proofing has to be short. But while this saves time the taste of the bread suffers. At the first day when the bread is still fresh it taste ok but already at the next day the yeast flavour overpowers everything else in the bread. The bread stale more fast, too.<\/p>\n
I use about\u00a0 0,4% \u20132% of the flour weight. That are 4g \u2013 20g fresh yeast at 1 kg flour. Dough that contains lots of sugar and fat needs more dough because high fat and sugar contents inhibit the yeast activity. I increase the yeast amount to 3% of the flour weight then.<\/p>\n
If you want to retard the dough in the fridge, use not more then 1% of the flour weight.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
High Hydration or low Hydration \u2013 what are the effects on the bread ?<\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n
The hydration of dough has an effect how open the crumb will be. A firm dough tend to have a small oven spring and result in a firm bread with crumbly crumb. I normally use a hydration between 65% and 75% of the flour wight.That\u2019s about 650g to 750g water added to 1 kg flour. I like to work with dough with 70% hydration which is easy to handle and has a nice oven spring. Because the amount of water which flour can bind can vary from time to time, it helps to keep about 10% of the water and adds this during kneading until the desired consistence is reached.<\/p>\n
If you are working with an higher hydrated dough like Ciabatta with 80% or more water, I recommend to work with double Hydration technique (when you use a kitchen machine). That means that you knead the dough with a hydration of 70% until the desired gluten development, then add the remaining water in small amounts and knead in between until all water is incooperated.<\/p>\n
If you want to knead with your hands, I would suggest to stir all ingredients together, let the dough rest for 30 min (that is called Autolysis)then fold the dough three times with a rest in between of 30 min. This will develop the gluten network finely.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
Egg or no Egg?What\u2019s the difference? <\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n
I do not use eggs in normal bread recipes but when baking sweet bread or pastry like brioche, challah or pandoro I normally add some eggs.Adding eggs adds a nice colour and rich taste to the pastry and improves the dough structure. Egg yolks contains fat, letcitine and choleserol which make the crumb finer and softer. This components help to bind fat in the dough when the fat content is very high, too.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
Apple sauce as a egg replacement? <\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n
Apple sauce adds moisture to the bread but has not the same effects on the dough structure then egg. I would not use it as egg replacement.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
What do I have to keep in mind when I am working with dough with high sugar content<\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\n
While a low sugar concentration (less then 5%) has an positive effect on the fermentation, a higher sugar amount disturb the fermentation. The yeast suffers on the osmotic stress that it caused because of the high sugar concentration. To counteract this effect increase the yeast amount to 3% or use a yeast strain that is osmotolerant.<\/p>\n
Sugar has a hygroscopic effect that means that sugar draws away water that is needed to hydrate the Proteins in the flour. And if the Proteins are not properly hydrated they can not build a proper gluten network. Thats why sugar should be added in small portions to the dough after the gluten development is done. When you have a close look to the dough, you can monitor how the dough gets softer because the sugar draws away the water that was bound in the dough.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
What do I have to keep in mind when I am working with dough with high sugar content<\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\n
When you add a high amount (10% or more) of fat to a dough, it will \u201ccoat\u201d the proteins that forms the gluten network. That slows done the gluten developemt. To avoid this add the fat after kneading is half way done. When you work with really high amounts (20% or more) add the fat at the end of the gluten development.<\/p>\n
\n
Butter or Oil, is there a difference in the result? <\/span><\/strong><\/h6>\n
You can replace butter with oil but then you have to reduce the amount of other liquids (for an example read this two<\/a> Challah<\/a> recipes). A there is nearly no difference in the crumb consistence but butter taste diffrent to oil. If you afraid that you can not use up the butter fast enough, you can freeze butter very well and defrost the amount you need.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n
I use only spelt flour, can I exchange wheat flour or is there something I have to think about?<\/span><\/span><\/h6>\n
I exchange Spelt flour with wheat flour without changing the other ingredients. But while kneading you have to take care that you not overknead and destroy the more fragil gluten network of spelt dough.\u00a0 When you are working with a kitchen machine shorten the time for kneading for about 30%.<\/p>\n
\n
\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A reader of \u201cHefe und mehr\u201d asked me to create a categorie for Tips and Basics about Baking, to make it more easy to find necessary information about baking bread. I\u2019m working at the moment on a little series about Bread baking theorie but until I am satisfied with the my preparations, I offered that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,406,142],"class_list":["post-2992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-theroie","tag-back-theorie","tag-zutaten","tag-fragen-zu"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2992"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20296,"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2992\/revisions\/20296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hefe-und-mehr.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}