My last blog post was about enriched doughs and it chimed with the festive bread for Christmas.

Associated with enrichment by fat, eggs, and sugar is the more common addition of fats and oils to normal savoury doughs which have no relationship to festive breads. I have pointed out that it is my advice to add fats and oils customarily to doughs which are using dark, bran-laden flour since bran is very thirsty and continues to absorb any moisture in both dough and finished baked bread, causing darker breads to dry out and stale quickly. The presence of vegetable oil or solid fat (butter, lard) inhibits, and thereby slows down, that staling process by binding the water into both starch and protein molecules. Apart from branny darker flours there is also the customary use of fat when making a product in which softness is desired. Examples would be an elegant dinner roll or a sandwich loaf where solid fat or veg oil could be used at about 5% of flour weight. In the previouys blog I also offered advice about adding the fat/oil late in the kneading process, not early. Wait until the dough is properly formed and gluten strands are manifestly beginning to form. When added at this stage the fat/oil will enhance the dough structure by actually lubricating the emerging gluten strands, resulting in a superior dough with better all-round structure.

An exploration of saffron dough cake is a continuation of the enrichment topic, although it uses the fat in an entirely different way. With the dough cake method the fat is rubbed into the flour early, in the manner of making short pastry. By coating the protein molecules in the flour with fat they are rendered less capable of absorbing water and the formation of gluten is thus inhibited. In short pastry the formation of gluten is not required and, even worse, is undesirable since the pastry eats tough and shrinks in the oven. (Now the student will understand more deeply why I recommend adding the fat late to bread doughs where every aspect of gluten is to be enhanced). Saffron dough cake is described as a “cakey” bread, with a soft and delicate crumb, and rubbing the fat in early ensures that result.

SAFFRON  DOUGH  CAKE

Known as a speciality of Devon and Cornwall, the saffron dough cake can be associated with the West Country generally. The growing of saffron lingered on in Cornwall for centuries after it declined in other southern counties in the east. Hence there is a perception that the use of saffron in buns and sweet breads is typical of Cornwall. There are many recipes for spiced dough cakes throughout the whole of the British Isles, recorded in early manuscript cookbooks and the later published books beginning in the sixteenth century. They occupied a place in baking before the arrival of baking powder changed habits and tastes considerably, and cake itself became readily available to us all. The presence of considerable amounts of fat and sugar caused this sort of confection to be called a “dough cake” to distinguish it from a “bread”. A Cornish friend who is also a baker told me that in her childhood the traditional way to serve the saffron dough cake was as toast not bread.

From mediaeval times there was a great tradition, or custom, of the baker simply enriching a piece of leftover dough to make the dough cake as a special product, perhaps once a week or when one of the customers was celebrating a special event. That must have been going along for centuries before we have recorded recipes of dough cakes made from scratch.

Once commonly available in the south of England, saffron nowadays has to be brought from Spain or Turkey at great expense. The best way to treat the saffron filaments is by hot infusion (unless the recipe features alcohol, when the filaments can be left to steep in the brandy or sherry, or whatever liqour is called for).

Place the filaments for a short while in a really warm place until they are entirely dry and crisp – a few minutes will do. Then immerse them in a cup of hot water to infuse. Here we shall put them into hot milk rather than water, seeing as warm milk is part of the recipe. While the saffron infuses for a while, the over-heated milk can cool down to the temperature required to make the ferment, a little over 30° C.

The recipe here is a professional baker’s method, favouring the “ferment” which was very popular in the first half of the last century. The purpose of a ferment is to get the yeast working vigorously so that it is “up and running” before it meets the rich ingredients (egg yolk, fat, sugar) which will bog it down and create a heavy barrier between it and its food, causing sluggish feeding.

For the ferment:          1 pt milk         (560ml)

                                    10 oz flour      (280 gm)

                                    2 oz yeast        (55 gm)

                                    4 oz sugar       (110 gm)

                                    small clump of saffron filaments – perhaps ½ teaspoon, ¼ gram

            Temperature of the finished ferment should be 28 – 30° C.

Soon it will become an expanding frothy pile. When it is ripe, perhaps in three-quarters of an hour, it will have a pitted surface where its tiny gas bubbles are popping. If it drops it is displaying that it is beyond “ready”.

Preparation for the doughmaking should have begun, beginning with the rough rubbing in of the butter into the flour.

When the ferment is ready add it to the rest of the ingredients.

For the dough:            the ferment

                                    1 lb 10 oz flour           (730 gm)

                                    7 oz butter                   (200 gm)

                                    4 oz sugar                   (110 gm)

                                    ½ oz salt                     (14 gm)

                                    grated nutmeg

                                    zest of lemon & orange

                                    1lb currants                 (450 gm)

                                    egg for glazing

The initial rubbing into the flour of the butter makes it into a “cakey” bread that the baker describes as “short”, meaning that it will not be strong dough with a powerful presence of gluten. The formation of gluten has been undermined by putting the fat to the flour first, inhibiting the ability of the flour to take up the water and form the normal amount of gluten that it would be capable of forming. Because gluten formation is thus restricted, kneading will be relatively easy and quick. Knead until a smooth and stretchy dough is formed, putting the currants in gently at the end of kneading.

Leave the dough to lie for about an hour and a half, maybe longer, before a downward poke with a floured finger reveals that the cavity left by the finger does not close over, meaning that the dough is ripe and ready.

Weigh it for the size that suits your tins, covering them for final proof, which could take another hour. About halfway through, when the dough has expanded enough to be filling the inside of the tin, egg glaze them.

For such a rich cakey bread with all that sugar, bake it in a gently moderate oven, well below 200° C. The baker’s oven would be 190C, domestic 170-180C.

Being such a rich bread it is difficult to feel when they are ready. The professional baker will tap a loaf to feel that it vibrates and shudders inside, but another useful test is to check that the soft side of the loaf springs back when it is gently depressed with the ball of the thumb. A thermometer probe inserted to the exact middle of the loaf should reach 92C when properly baked.

Unlike the oilseed crops, the cereal grains contain only a small portion of natural oils or fats. In wheat and rye it is only about 1 – 2%, while it is considerably higher in barley and oats, where it can be as high as 6 – 7%.

The well known lipids are the ones that comprise the highly nutritious oil that is part of the germ, and there are lipids which are playing important roles in both the endosperm and cells of the inner bran layers. They are described scientifically as being types of fatty acids. Of course the whiter flours barely contain any germ oil since their meticulous sieving removes nearly all traces of germ, aleurone layer, and bran, but other lipids will be present in all flours since they play an important role in protecting the interior of each cell, forming a barrier between the inner portion of the cell and its membrane which is its protective coating through which the nutrients come inwards and the waste is flushed outwards. In this role the lipids are associated more with the protein cells than the starch.

Given that natural oils and fats are such a tiny fraction of flour, when we make rich breads we need to add fats to get the special effects we are looking for. Butter is the superior baking fat for stability and flavour, and it is incorporated best into dough in its solid form rather than melted by the application of heat. Slightly soften the butter by giving it some time out of the refrigerator, allowing it to approach ambient temperature rather than melting it. Most bakers would agree that butter is their favourite fat, but they lament its price which inevitably makes the goods expensive. I add it to the stollen dough at one-fifth of the flour weight. Goods as rich as croissants have it as half the flour weight.

The traditional solid bakers’ fat in the British Isles that used to be the universal bread fat is lard, but sadly today it is very difficult to find attractive lard made by a butcher. The lard of today is industrially made with an astonishing array of chemical additives.

Vegetable oil goes well in dough, and has gained a wide appeal since many consumers are vegetarians, or simply seek to avoid animal fats. I always add veg oil to any dough that is described as wholemeal, brown, or “coarse”. The reason for this is that bran, always present in the darker breads, is continually absorbing moisture, causing the baked bread to dry out and go stale more quickly. The staling process can be off-set to a small degree by the addition of oil or fat which gets in the way of the starch cells’ release of water as they revert to their natural shape. The guidelines for use of oil in dough would be to use at least double the salt weight – say 3 – 4%.

It is important to add the fat late in the dough-making process. If you add it at the start it will inhibit the formation of gluten since the flour particles when coated by fat cannot properly absorb water to form the gluten. Rubbing the fat in early is the preserve of short crust pastry, or a “cakey” type of bread like West Country saffron dough cake. When the fat is added at the correct time – late in the kneading – it actually enhances the dough by lubricating the gluten strands.

Fat will always be in the recipe for rich and delicate dinner rolls, as well as sandwich bread which needs to be able to be sliced thinly and is unattractive when it begins to stale. On the other hand, there are lots of white breads that do not need fat enrichment when they are made with strong flour of a high protein strength which holds its dough moisture when baked, as well as sourdough breads which need no added fat since their acidic chemistry gives a long shelf life.

September 7th, 2021

In professional bakers’ ovens the bread is always laid on the floor of the oven. It is the best way to bake, having this type of powerful heat transferred directly into the bottom of the individual loaf or the metal tray of rolls or pastries (or whatever is being baked). Its name is conducted heat.

Usually the hearth of the baker’s oven is composed of masonry tiles, capable of storing a vast amount of heat. There used to be a whole industry of refractory tile makers, but with the decline of masonry ovens after the 1950’s now oven decks are likely to be tiled with pottery kiln shelves or a composite refractory material which imitates the properties of deep tiles.

The hot tiled floor gives a spectacular rise to the loaf, known as “oven spring”, and then it goes on to assure a steady and even bake. Above and surrounding the loaf will be radiated heat from all other oven surfaces.

The trouble with cooks’ ovens and common domestic ovens is that they are tinny little boxes with the goods to be baked perched on wire shelves, and the style of heat is convection, based on the circulation of hot air. There is a lack of solid hot surfaces. (The British slow combustion stove is better since they often have heavy tiling around the furnace, and they are built with solid cast-iron bodies.)

My advice to the home baker or chef is to place masonry tiles on the oven shelves, and give your tile(s) a good heating up period – perhaps 30 minutes would be required to get the tile(s) sufficiently hot. Whenever I mention this to students I am surprised how many announce they already have a “pizza stone”.

By baking on your hot tile you are emulating the pro baker, and in the circumstances you are overcoming the greatest weakness of your light-weight oven. On this extremely hot tile you can learn to place the loaf directly so that bottom heat and oven spring become features of your baking.

The tiles I sell at PANARY are 12mm pottery kiln shelves cut to the common dimensions of domestic ovens, as shown here.

Baker’s Topic – Slashing the Loaves

Slashing the loaves with a sharp blade just prior to loading them in the oven is one of the most craftsmanlike pursuits in baking.

While it can often be referred to as “decorating” within the bakery, it is actually much more than decoration. Its main purpose is to allow the loaf to expand evenly and handsomely when the loaf is subject to the rapid expansion that occurs when it is placed in the oven.

Subjected to such massive heat all around it and particularly driving from the oven floor into the base of the loaf, the existing gases within the loaf start to expand. Further, the yeast reacts to this new burst of warmth and has a final flurry of excitement, creating more gas before expiring at around 60 degrees C. Hence, the loaf swells surprisingly quickly. The name for this expansion is “oven spring”. When it is a neat line running along the top of a tinned loaf it can be referred to as “oven break”. Unless the skilled baker intervenes the rapid expansion can cause the loaf to distort, perhaps leaning over, or changing shape from straight to curved, perhaps even blowing a hernia out one side.

The cutting or slashing of the loaf’s surface is done to control the oven spring. The blossoming of such energy will be released through the slashes, opening them out neatly and making the bread look so beautiful in its final form. Indeed the decoration itself can be pretty, but great beauty occurs where the slashes provide that lively contrast between the original crust, the ridge of the cut, and the different texture of the inner portion of dough erupting out through the opening made by the cut. The handsome loaf is a contrast of colour and texture.

A few tips

The blade must be extremely sharp, and that is why old-fashioned razor blades for shaving are so popular. I attach the razor blade to those slender sticks made as coffee stirrers, (like an ice-cream stick), They are vulnerable to pitting and rust, losing their edge after just a day or two, thus need to be constantly changed.

Razor blades, while preferred by many craft bakers, are not the only tool. Any type of knife does the job, provided it is extremely sharp, and has a blade length suited to what loaf you are slashing. My French pen knives are made of carbon steel which sharpens easily and, like a butcher, they are sharpened repeatedly in the bakery.

You have to learn through trial and error how deep to cut. A general rule is a deeper cut is required when the loaves are going into the oven a bit early, which means oven spring will be more pronounced. When the loaves are over-proved (you are having a bad day) there are types where it is best not to cut at all since the impact of knife or razor might deflate the loaf. Wholemeal would be such a type.

Cutting sticks

Cutting sticks is a joy since their slashes can open out so generously. Don’t apply the knife transverse to the slender shape; instead make the cuts run almost straight down the stick’s back, with the next cut starting right beside the end of the previous one. Experience baguette cutters will urge you to hold the blade leaning to one side as you cut, avoiding the vertical.

Enjoy your cutting, enjoy being the craftsman baker who controls the activity in the oven.