User talk:Gandalf StormCrow/Draft: Techniques of Baking Yeast Breads

A sandbox to work on article on baking yeast breads. This draft comes out of the talk of a major reworking of baking, perhaps involving a new page on the technique of baking bread. Nathan has already put in significant effort toward a rewrite (on which this draft builds). Since my thoughts go in slightly different directions, I am working on a revision of his work here. We can talk through the differences once the two drafts are closer to completion. ---Gandalf StormCrow 18:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Here are my suggestions for the article. They are mostly grammatical as I think the content is good. Bold is my comments or something I think should be added while italic means I think it should be removed.

In its simplest form, Baking Yeast Bread is the process of baking a dough combining flour, water and yeast to make bread. Baking bread is elevated to art when the baker works to draw the full potential of substance and flavor out of the grain to create a loaf that becomes "the staff of life."

Classically, the journey from basic ingredients to finished loaf is divided into twelve steps, though differences exist between the understandings of particular teachers and writers: organization, mixing, primary fermentation, degassing, dividing, rounding or pre-shaping, resting, final shaping, proofing, baking, cooling, and storing.

Classification seems good. :-)

Ingredients The simplest dough can be made from but using only flour, yeast and water, though the absence of salt yields a loaf tasting rather flat and dull to most modern palates. One line of variants of this simplest of recipes, however, has entered the pantheon of good bread: those from Tuscany. Tuscans overcome the flat taste by topping the bread with intensely flavored spreads and pastes or eating it with deeply flavored dishes.

What the French call pain ordinaire, which can be translated into English as ordinary bread, or the usual bread, includes only four ingredients: flour, salt, yeast and water. The flavor of any particular loaf of pain ordinaire must be coaxed out of the dough through the various techniques, both ancient and modern, available to the baker.

Bread dough also can be enhanced with additional ingredients. Sugars give a sweeter taste to the palate and provide an additional source of nutrients on which the yeast can work. Fats, in forms such as butter, shortening, oil or eggs, tenderize the dough, increase the richness of the dough and lengthen the bread's shelf life. Milk can be substituted for part or all of the liquid, which will tenderize the dough and darken the crust slightly, through the addition of lactose, which helps caramalize the crust. Seeds, herbs and spices, and other inclusions such as onions, garlic or roasted red peppers, add additional flavors to the dough.

Most of Mixing seems good except this part:

Soaker A final technique used in creating indirect doughs is to soak whole or cracked grains and seeds prior to their addition into the dough. This technique hydrates the grains or seeds so they don't rob the dough of water, softens them to lessen their ability to puncture the dough structure, and to enhances flavor by lengthening enzymatic activity.

Rise seems good. :-)

I’m not a big fan of the Baking section … I think it could focus solely on the baking of bread.

The Cooling section needs either expanded or deleted.

The rest seems good. :-)