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Bread Making: Kneading
Kneading breaks them up into small bubbles of uniform size. It is also kneaded (2) To develop the gluten. We find in wheat flour two substances (gliaden and glutenin) which when mixed with water and well kneaded unite and form gluten, the sticky substance in the dough. 7. Bread is baked to make it palatable, to cook the starch, to drive off the alcohol and carbon dioxide gas and to kill the yeast plants. Half baked bread will cause indigestion. Directions for Kneading. 1. Slip the fingers under the edge of the dough farthest from you and fold the dough towards you about two-thirds of its length. (Fig. 1.) 2. Then press the dough hard with the palms of the hands, (Fig. 2) giving the dough a little rolling motion from you. 3. Turn the dough towards the left one-fourth of the way round so that the end of the dough that was at the right will be farthest from you. (Fig. 3.) 4. Repeat until the dough is well kneaded, being careful to keep the smooth side of the dough next to the board. Bread Mixer.
A bread mixer greatly reduces the labor of bread making in the house. The mixing, rising and kneading are all done in the mixer. The bread board will only be needed when the bread is ready to be formed into loaves. It takes less strength to turn the crank of a mixer than to knead dough by hand and the bread will be of more uniform texture especially if one is inexperienced in the art of bread baking. Method of Mixing Yeast Batters and Doughs. 1. Scald the liquid. 2. Soften the yeast cake with 1 T. luke warm liquid. (Lukewarm means the same as body temperature. Test with the little finger. If the liquid feels neither warm nor cool to the finger, it is the proper temperature.) 3. Add sugar, salt and shortening to the hot liquid. 4. Cool to body temperature and add the softened yeast. 5. Add one and one-half times as much flour as you have liquid then beat well. 6. If the bread is to rise three times, cover the dish and set in a warm place and let rise until it has doubled in bulk. If it is to rise only twice proceed from No. 5 to No. 7. 7. Beat thoroughly then add as much flour as you can beat in with a spoon. 8. Turn onto a well-floured board, roll dough in flour, then knead it with the hands until smooth and of even texture throughout. 9. Put the dough into a greased bowl, brush over with water or lard to keep from drying on top and set in a warm place to rise. If you wish the bread to rise rapidly surround the bowl with water as warm as you can hold the back of your hand in. 10. When the dough has risen to twice the size turn it onto the board and knead until all the bubbles are broken down. Use as little flour as possible for this kneading. 11. Form into loaves and put into greased baking pans. Be sure the dough is smooth on top and fits well into the corners of the pans. 12. Brush the top with melted lard or water and set in warm place to rise until twice its size. 13. Bake in moderate oven forty-five to sixty minutes for one pound loaves. 14. Turn the bread frequently during the first fifteen minutes of baking so that it will rise evenly. It should not begin to brown until it has been in the oven at least twenty minutes. 15. When bread is done, remove from pans, brush upper crust with water to soften it and set on rack to cool where the air can reach all sides. 16. When cool put away in stone jar or ventilated bread can. Do not wrap in cloth or it will mold.
A Perfect Loaf of Bread.
A loaf of bread consists of the crust, which is the brown, outside portion and the crumb, the white inner part. A perfect loaf of bread should be a golden brown color on top, sides and bottom. It should be evenly risen in the pan, with the crust smooth and even, not cracked nor protruding over the sides. If well baked it will feel firm when pressed and will spring back quickly when pressure is removed. When cut, the crumb of the bread should be creamy in color, should slice smoothly without crumbling and the holes should be small and uniform. The taste should be sweet and nutty.
When learning to bake bread it would be a good plan to fill out the following score card after each baking. By comparing methods and results, any faults could be corrected and in a short time perfect loaves of bread would be produced each time. Date.
Score Card.
This is a textbook method rather than a single recipe, and the proportions are given as ratios: liquid first, then flour at one and a half times its volume for the batter stage, then as much more as the dough will take. A few of the instructions belong to the coal-range era and can be dropped.
- Moderate ovenThe book gives no figure; "moderate" in period usage is roughly 350-375F. Large one-pound loaves are often better started at 375F for the first fifteen minutes and finished at 350F, but 350F throughout will work in a modern oven.
- Doneness by temperatureForty-five to sixty minutes is a fair estimate for a one-pound loaf. The reliable test is an internal temperature of 195-205F; the book's own advice about a firm crust that springs back is the same test by hand.
- The yeast cakeOne cake of compressed yeast of the period is roughly equivalent to 2 1/4 teaspoons (one packet) of active dry or instant yeast. Active dry should be softened in the lukewarm liquid as directed; instant can go in with the flour.
- Lukewarm and the little-finger testBody temperature, about 98-100F. A thermometer is easier: 105-110F for softening yeast, and keep well below about 130F, the point at which yeast starts to be killed. The finger test works because liquid at blood heat registers as neither warm nor cool.
- Scalding the liquidThe book does not say what the liquid is. If it is milk, scalding was done to deactivate a whey protein that slackens dough and to kill competing bacteria in raw milk. With pasteurized milk the step is generally considered unnecessary; warm it to about 110F and proceed.
- Turning the loaves during bakingStep 14 most likely addresses the uneven heat of a wood or coal oven. In a modern oven, rotate the pans once at the halfway mark at most, and do not open the door in the first fifteen minutes.
- Kneading down every bubbleAfter the first rise, current practice is gentler: fold and deflate the dough rather than working it until all gas is expelled, and use as little extra flour as the book itself advises. Heavy flouring at this stage is a common cause of dry, streaky crumb.
- Abbreviations and vessels"1 T." is one tablespoon. A stone jar is a glazed stoneware crock; a ventilated bread can is a tin box with punched holes. Any container that admits some air works, and the warning against wrapping in cloth still holds for a cut loaf kept at room temperature.
- GliadenAn older spelling of gliadin. Gliadin and glutenin are the two wheat proteins that link up into gluten once hydrated and worked, which is exactly what the kneading motion described here accomplishes.
This comes out of the domestic-science movement, which by the 1910s had put bread making into schoolrooms as a lesson in chemistry and method rather than something absorbed at a mother's elbow. The tone gives it away: numbered steps, an explanation of why bread is baked at all, a caution that half-baked bread causes indigestion, and a score card to be filled out after each attempt and compared with the last. The bread mixer praised here was a crank-turned tin pail with a kneading blade clamped to the kitchen table, sold widely in the period and pitched, as the text does, at the inexperienced baker who could not yet judge dough by feel. The method assumes a compressed yeast cake, commercially available since the later nineteenth century; earlier household bread relied on homemade or salt-rising ferments.