Sure, a simple enriched bread like challah you can go by feel but you're going to have a lot more trouble succeeding with sourdough panettone without a tested formula exactly because it is a living organism.
Of particular importance are the ratios of starter-flour-water when refreshing your culture (thrice daily! then bundling or floating for overnight storage...) It influences the ratio of Saccharomyces to Lactobacillus which has an effect on the pH of your dough after the first or second fermentation. If pH goes too low the gluten will dissolve and your dough will disintegrate when you try to knead in more ingredients.
> Viewed through this lens, the modern illusion of control shatters, but something much more liberating takes its place. The recipe is a suggestion. The rules of baking — baker’s percentages, hydration levels, the established ratio of flour-to-water-to-fat — are the underlying framework. This is the scaffolding.
Look, the author isn't technically wrong. But also, I have to point out that the reason for all the control and preciseness is replicability.
If you measure out everything by gram, mix/kneed for the right amount of time, set the temperature the the right number, and bake for the right amount of time, you'll get the same loaf, texture, everything, every single time.
That's why we have modern store bread loafs. That's why all bakeries aren't using more "artistic" methods of intuiting the amount of ingredients.
So long as you can accept that by doing thing by feel you'll end up with loaves that are rocks, crumbs, or dough balls. That are overcooked or undercooked. Then yeah, you can intuit as much as you like. Sometimes you'll get something good. You'll even get better at it till you usually get something good.
Reproducibility requires more than just measuring ingredients, however, as other characteristics can greatly change results. Leaven viability, flour moisture content, relative humidity, ambient temperature, and accidents of a home-baker's process (did you get interrupted by a child / work / partner / household exigency during your dough prep or bake) all have pretty sharp impacts on results.
Precise reproducibility requires not just monitoring ingredients, but overall environment, dough response, and more.
Or ... you can roll with it as an amateur (both in the "nonprofessional" and "for the love of it" senses), recognise that every bake is its own experiment, measure what you can, but allow for variation. I've been baking bread for about six years now. Results vary, many look great, and all but a very few taste amazing, even where I go far out of nominal parameters.
Biggest goof to date was omitting salt from a batch. (Salting the finished product ... recovered mostly.) Otherwise I've survived odd assortments of flours, accelerated or extended prooving cycles, high- or low-temperature ovens, different cookware, and more. Bread is just really freaking resilient stuff, and so long as you're not planning on hitting the same spot every time, have fun with it, and learn, in the spirit of TFA.
The whole obsession about measuring giving exact hydration percentages is strange to me.
Assume you have 100g of flour at equilibrium 20% ambient humidity, and the same 100g of flour at 80% humidity.
I don’t know how different the effective moisture content would be, but measuring the weight of the flour to the gram seems like you’re including the moisture in the weight of the flour. Maybe one packs denser on a scoop. I don’t know. But I don’t necessarily think it’s more accurate.
On the other hand, it’s really easy to just pour in 540g of flour, mix in a shy tablespoon of salt, 280g of water, and a good glop of starter. Far easier than trying to get consistent scoops or measure to the meniscus in a liquid measured.
I measure by mass when I bake, but I've always had the same questions as you (about humidity, for example). That was always the answer I got when discussing volume versus mass measurements — that volume can change due to all sorts of things — but it always seemed to me that mass could change for the same reasons.
I eventually decided mass measurements are most useful when the amount you need in mass is fairly small relative to the volume of the particles of the thing you're measuring. Measuring a small volume of nuts can be tricky, for example, because the nuts are different sizes and shapes, but mass is fairly consistent.
Measurement with baking in general is conducive to replicability assuming the same conditions are met. That is, that you're in the same bakery, with the same oven, same flour, and so forth. It becomes less reliable as you start changing variables.
This is pretty obvious even with flour: two bread flours can absorb really different amounts of water, so you almost have to be aware of texture and so forth. What you want to achieve in a recipe is a certain outcome, in dough characteristics and final loaf. How you get there can be informed by a bunch of things but is never guaranteed unless everything is the same every time.
I worked at a culinary school for a while. In the bread kitchen they taught you the formula stuff, but also, to recognize what the dough would feel like, look like, even taste like, when it was right. They taught you how to adapt if the flour was a little drier today than yesterday, if the kitchen was a little more humid.
Of course, bakery products like that are really made on production lines like this.[1] There's a whole industry for artisanal bread making machinery.
Machinery for fancy twisted form factors is available. Here's the Fritsch Multitwist.[2] That seems to be more of a European thing. Although it can be configured to make big pretzels.
Speaking of loafs and culinary precision, from my father's side they always used single cut even to get half of loaf, I used 2 cuts when I wanted half loaf and that annoyed them because when they wanted full loaf after me, they first had to remove my remaining half loaf. How do you cut your bread, single cut (wedge) or double cut?
If there are these places on the internet the article mentions which perfect bread ingredients “to the gram”, someone should share that with American bakeries.
It’s near impossible to find decent bread, compared to EU countries like France/Belgium/Germany. :(
The american pallet is simply different and all our breads tend to be sweeter. The other part of this is that amercian breads tend to only use 1 grain, wheat. And they tend to either use whole wheat or bleached wheat.
Even when something is a "9 grain" bread, usually what that actually means is it's wheat bread with other grains in the crust.
I’ve always found King Arthur to be reliable? Their recipes are good and include metric, you can get the flour anywhere and they’re very proactive with support if you have questions about tweaking. Also good books.
Good bread exists, it’s just not cheap like it is in Europe.
King Arthur recipes are good in my limited home baking experience. As long as you remain somewhat near to it, you’ll get something edible.
I’ve found though for things like hydration or proofing times your environment is going to have a noticeable impact on that.
King Arthur recipes are written with their products in mind, so if you’re using other flour make sure to check the protein content and that it matches! I’ve made that mistake before when I had consistently bad results and realized the flour I had was quite a bit lower in protein content despite having the same general “all purpose” moniker.
KA do make specific bread flours (high-gluten / high-protein), so that if you're used to those a GP or pastry flour will yield far less gluten development.
That said, I've used a cheap bleached white AP flour when that's all that's available and had ... quite good results. My preference is bread flours, and generally at least some whole wheat in the mix.
I think you'll find two things are true about American bulk baked goods:
- The quality is highly uniform.
- The quality is highly bland.
As with any mass-produced food, the goals are typically quantity and low cost, though often with a putative appearance of quality or artisanal character. The compromises are largely against a high-quality product, though there are places where this may be found, albeit at far higher prices.
not disagreeing, the US certainly doesn't have the variety of France/Belgium/Germany, and the average is certainly much worse.
But, there are local bakeries here and there and many of them seem to make pretty good breads? Maybe I don't know what you're specifically looking for though. I'm in LA at the moment and I can be both frustrated with the average but still find some good stuff.
Oh gee, who’d imagine you’d be able to find a decent baker in in LA?
Always hilarious how people in LA/NYC assume that obviously the experience of living in one of the largest cities in the country applies to the whole of the country.
Sure, a simple enriched bread like challah you can go by feel but you're going to have a lot more trouble succeeding with sourdough panettone without a tested formula exactly because it is a living organism.
Of particular importance are the ratios of starter-flour-water when refreshing your culture (thrice daily! then bundling or floating for overnight storage...) It influences the ratio of Saccharomyces to Lactobacillus which has an effect on the pH of your dough after the first or second fermentation. If pH goes too low the gluten will dissolve and your dough will disintegrate when you try to knead in more ingredients.
> Viewed through this lens, the modern illusion of control shatters, but something much more liberating takes its place. The recipe is a suggestion. The rules of baking — baker’s percentages, hydration levels, the established ratio of flour-to-water-to-fat — are the underlying framework. This is the scaffolding.
Look, the author isn't technically wrong. But also, I have to point out that the reason for all the control and preciseness is replicability.
If you measure out everything by gram, mix/kneed for the right amount of time, set the temperature the the right number, and bake for the right amount of time, you'll get the same loaf, texture, everything, every single time.
That's why we have modern store bread loafs. That's why all bakeries aren't using more "artistic" methods of intuiting the amount of ingredients.
So long as you can accept that by doing thing by feel you'll end up with loaves that are rocks, crumbs, or dough balls. That are overcooked or undercooked. Then yeah, you can intuit as much as you like. Sometimes you'll get something good. You'll even get better at it till you usually get something good.
Reproducibility requires more than just measuring ingredients, however, as other characteristics can greatly change results. Leaven viability, flour moisture content, relative humidity, ambient temperature, and accidents of a home-baker's process (did you get interrupted by a child / work / partner / household exigency during your dough prep or bake) all have pretty sharp impacts on results.
Precise reproducibility requires not just monitoring ingredients, but overall environment, dough response, and more.
Or ... you can roll with it as an amateur (both in the "nonprofessional" and "for the love of it" senses), recognise that every bake is its own experiment, measure what you can, but allow for variation. I've been baking bread for about six years now. Results vary, many look great, and all but a very few taste amazing, even where I go far out of nominal parameters.
Biggest goof to date was omitting salt from a batch. (Salting the finished product ... recovered mostly.) Otherwise I've survived odd assortments of flours, accelerated or extended prooving cycles, high- or low-temperature ovens, different cookware, and more. Bread is just really freaking resilient stuff, and so long as you're not planning on hitting the same spot every time, have fun with it, and learn, in the spirit of TFA.
The whole obsession about measuring giving exact hydration percentages is strange to me.
Assume you have 100g of flour at equilibrium 20% ambient humidity, and the same 100g of flour at 80% humidity.
I don’t know how different the effective moisture content would be, but measuring the weight of the flour to the gram seems like you’re including the moisture in the weight of the flour. Maybe one packs denser on a scoop. I don’t know. But I don’t necessarily think it’s more accurate.
On the other hand, it’s really easy to just pour in 540g of flour, mix in a shy tablespoon of salt, 280g of water, and a good glop of starter. Far easier than trying to get consistent scoops or measure to the meniscus in a liquid measured.
I measure by mass when I bake, but I've always had the same questions as you (about humidity, for example). That was always the answer I got when discussing volume versus mass measurements — that volume can change due to all sorts of things — but it always seemed to me that mass could change for the same reasons.
I eventually decided mass measurements are most useful when the amount you need in mass is fairly small relative to the volume of the particles of the thing you're measuring. Measuring a small volume of nuts can be tricky, for example, because the nuts are different sizes and shapes, but mass is fairly consistent.
Measurement with baking in general is conducive to replicability assuming the same conditions are met. That is, that you're in the same bakery, with the same oven, same flour, and so forth. It becomes less reliable as you start changing variables.
This is pretty obvious even with flour: two bread flours can absorb really different amounts of water, so you almost have to be aware of texture and so forth. What you want to achieve in a recipe is a certain outcome, in dough characteristics and final loaf. How you get there can be informed by a bunch of things but is never guaranteed unless everything is the same every time.
I worked at a culinary school for a while. In the bread kitchen they taught you the formula stuff, but also, to recognize what the dough would feel like, look like, even taste like, when it was right. They taught you how to adapt if the flour was a little drier today than yesterday, if the kitchen was a little more humid.
Of course, bakery products like that are really made on production lines like this.[1] There's a whole industry for artisanal bread making machinery.
Machinery for fancy twisted form factors is available. Here's the Fritsch Multitwist.[2] That seems to be more of a European thing. Although it can be configured to make big pretzels.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkfnFpOEEvU
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xVNK_XRkxM
Speaking of loafs and culinary precision, from my father's side they always used single cut even to get half of loaf, I used 2 cuts when I wanted half loaf and that annoyed them because when they wanted full loaf after me, they first had to remove my remaining half loaf. How do you cut your bread, single cut (wedge) or double cut?
If there are these places on the internet the article mentions which perfect bread ingredients “to the gram”, someone should share that with American bakeries.
It’s near impossible to find decent bread, compared to EU countries like France/Belgium/Germany. :(
The american pallet is simply different and all our breads tend to be sweeter. The other part of this is that amercian breads tend to only use 1 grain, wheat. And they tend to either use whole wheat or bleached wheat.
Even when something is a "9 grain" bread, usually what that actually means is it's wheat bread with other grains in the crust.
Very hard to find a rye bread in the US.
I’ve always found King Arthur to be reliable? Their recipes are good and include metric, you can get the flour anywhere and they’re very proactive with support if you have questions about tweaking. Also good books.
Good bread exists, it’s just not cheap like it is in Europe.
King Arthur recipes are good in my limited home baking experience. As long as you remain somewhat near to it, you’ll get something edible.
I’ve found though for things like hydration or proofing times your environment is going to have a noticeable impact on that.
King Arthur recipes are written with their products in mind, so if you’re using other flour make sure to check the protein content and that it matches! I’ve made that mistake before when I had consistently bad results and realized the flour I had was quite a bit lower in protein content despite having the same general “all purpose” moniker.
KA do make specific bread flours (high-gluten / high-protein), so that if you're used to those a GP or pastry flour will yield far less gluten development.
That said, I've used a cheap bleached white AP flour when that's all that's available and had ... quite good results. My preference is bread flours, and generally at least some whole wheat in the mix.
I think you'll find two things are true about American bulk baked goods:
- The quality is highly uniform.
- The quality is highly bland.
As with any mass-produced food, the goals are typically quantity and low cost, though often with a putative appearance of quality or artisanal character. The compromises are largely against a high-quality product, though there are places where this may be found, albeit at far higher prices.
Of you may bake your own.
not disagreeing, the US certainly doesn't have the variety of France/Belgium/Germany, and the average is certainly much worse.
But, there are local bakeries here and there and many of them seem to make pretty good breads? Maybe I don't know what you're specifically looking for though. I'm in LA at the moment and I can be both frustrated with the average but still find some good stuff.
> I’m in LA
Oh gee, who’d imagine you’d be able to find a decent baker in in LA?
Always hilarious how people in LA/NYC assume that obviously the experience of living in one of the largest cities in the country applies to the whole of the country.
I enjoy a local Pittsburgh bakery Mancini's. That's my benchmark for "good bread", I've never been to Europe though.
Eh, I found the Seattle artisanal bakeries (Fremont, Grand Central) to be better than all but the best I’ve found in Europe.