Bread Day Part 1

Okay, I'll be honest. Bread day was really only one day. But you don't understand! There was so. much. bread. On the menu for the day: 7 grain bread, focaccia, pita, and breadsticks.

For all 4 breads, we were using yeast to help with rising. There are 10 production stages for yeast breads:

1. Scaling the ingredients 
2. Mixing and kneading the dough
3. Fermenting the dough
4. Punching down the dough
5. Portioning the dough
6. Rounding the portions
7. Shaping the portions
8. Proofing the products
9. Baking the products
10. Cooling and storing the products

A lot of these steps are self explanatory, but I'll briefly go through them anyway.

So, we started with 7 grain bread, a heavy dough with tons of, well, grains. The 7 grains consisted of bread flour, rye flour, barley flour, cornmeal, rolled oats, flax seeds, and millets. First you need to start by scaling the ingredients and making sure that you have the right amount of everything you need. In baking, it's all chemistry. The only thing which changes the amounts in baking is the humidity. On a rainy or humid day, you may find your dough to be stickier than normal, and you should have extra flour on hand to add during mixing. Once you have all of your ingredients, mixing and kneading the dough comes next. This is one of the self explanatory ones. Although, maybe not. We started by adding the yeast mixture into a mixing bowl first, and sifting all of the dry ingredients together so that they were evenly distributed. If you add them directly in, you may get globs of salt or other tastes in your bread that aren't properly mixed in. Once the dry ingredients are sifted, they are then added to the yeast mixture, and mixed in and kneaded together. Fermenting the dough came next. Fermentation begins the second the mixing has finished, and continues until the point when the dough is baked. The dough should be covered in a bowl and placed in a dry, warm place in order for the dough to rise. Some people turn their oven on very low and allow the dough to rise on an open oven door, others prefer to not leave the oven door open and put the bowl on top of the stove with the oven on. After the dough has risen, punch down the dough.  Punching the dough down reactivates the yeast cells, encouraging more yeast activity. When portioning the dough you want all of the portions to be the same size so they can cook evenly. After you portion the dough, round the portions using the sides of your hands and kind of tuck it under to be rounded. Rounding stretches the outside layer of gluten into a smooth coating. This helps hold in the gases and makes it easier to shape. Once you're ready to shape the dough,  you have a bunch of shapes to choose from. If making a challah, you can make rolls, braided loaves, or pull apart challahs. For seven grain, we rolled the dough out into an oval, and then rolled the dough and placed it in a loaf pan. Proofing the dough is the last of the fermentation process, and is done while the dough is already shaped. Egg the loaves and bake the products until you've determined that they are done. Doneness can be determined by tapping on the top of the bread and listening for a hollow sound. When you cool and store breads, take the product out of the pan to cool on racks. Store breads at room temperature or freeze them. Do not refrigerate breads. They'll get stale pretty quickly.

I absolutely love this seven grain bread. After shaping the breads and washing them with egg, we added crushed garlic and rosemary to the top. You can choose any variety of toppings for this type of bread since it's so rich with grains; you can top it with oats, flax seeds, or any herbs and spices.

Tip of the day: When beginning the process of baking bread, you need to test the yeast to make sure it's active. Follow recipe directions, but when it says "warm water" to be mixed with the yeast, make sure the water isn't too hot. If it's too hot, it'll kill the yeast. You want your water to be about 90-100 degrees. Also, add some sugar to the yeast mixture, just a tablespoon or so, and it'll get the yeast bubbling real quick.