Autolyse

Autolyse (preferred by British bakers) or autolysis (the more widely used scientific term that refers to the self-digestion of a cell by its own enzymes) was a discovery by Professor Raymond Calvel in the early ’70’s. He was the great French baker who, seeing how badly French bread needed rescuing from mediocrity, went off to study sciences and ended up as an academic bread consultant and author. His most famous book, The Taste of Bread, is like a manual for bakers, and was translated into English by James MacGuire, who is a chef and baker in Montreal, Canada. Sadly, Prof. Calvel did not include autolyse as a topic in his book, but MacGuire added a short summary of it as an adjunct to the chapter on dough mixing.