PANARY

Craft baking courses, wood-fired ovens, and consultancy

  • Home
  • Courses
    • Baking Courses
    • Apprentice Days
    • 1 Day Courses
    • 2 Day Courses
    • 3 Day Courses
    • Residential
    • Accommodation
  • Watermill
  • Gift vouchers
  • Blog
    • Blog
    • Newsletters
    • Bakers’ Topics
  • Contact
  • Course Calendar
  • Buy Our Bread
  • Fees
    • Fees
    • Accommodation
  • Wood-Fired Ovens
  • Consultancy
  • About
    • About
    • Testimonials

Bagels and the water bath

12th August 2019 by Paul Merry

Bagels and the water bath

Bagels and the water bath

For both bagels and pretzels, dunking them in the water bath is very important for their appearance and flavour. Many experts will say that it is the process of dunking in boiling water that is the making of a good bagel. Industrial baking pursues convenience, and corner cutting is defended as “cost cutting”, so nowadays the boiling is replaced by steam injection in modern rack ovens. 

To an afficianado of the real bagel, this oven steaming gives an inferior result, and bagels made without the boiling are rated as inferior to a point of being not worthy of the name.

The Bagel bath!

The bath of simmering hot water is made up as a caustic alkaline solution, which in the past was made by the addition to the water of lye. Lye’s chemical name is sodium hydroxide and it can climb to 14 on the pH scale. Although one can purchase food-grade lye it is essentially the same caustic solution that is used for making soap and cleaning drains. Its importance concerns the ultimate dark crust, the way it forms and tastes. The alkaline nature of the water bath affects the relationship between proteins and sugars on the surface of the dough. When the alkaline lye breaks down the proteins into smaller amino acid particles these fuse more easily with the sugars in the dough surface, creating flavour compounds, and setting up the crust of the bagel for a more spectacular Maillard Reaction in the oven.

Maillard Reaction

The Maillard process is responsible for browning, and the widely different flavours of many foodstuffs, mainly in roasting, baking, grilling, and frying, of which bread is just one. For the best and quickest reaction it needs high temperatures and a dry surface on the cooking food, which will soon be hotter than boiling point. During the process, literally hundreds of compounds will form, all responsible for flavour, aroma, and colour.

With bread, the Maillard Reaction becomes an important phase of the baking stage, affecting not just crust colour but, more importantly, aromas and flavours. Its occurrence is based on that reaction between reducing sugars (simple dietary sugars, monosaccharides like galacose, glucose, and fructose) and amino acids undergoing extreme heat. It is different from caramelisation, which only destroys sugars, and occurs at even higher temperatures. As explained for the bagel, the Maillard Reaction is enhanced when the food comes from an alkaline environment.

Most amateur bakers and home bakers would agree that it is a big step to handle dangerous lye that requires rubber gloves and protective goggles. You can avoid lye by making instead your alkaline solution for your water bath using soda bi-carbonate, also known as baking soda, some types of which can reach about 9 pH. For those purchasing the common form from suburban shops, use it in the water at 6% (meaning 60 gm to a litre).

Good baking, Panarians, and I hope you try bagels.

Paul

PS. We make bagels to special order on our Thursday productions days. Why not give them a try? Select “Click and Collect” or “Home Delivery” at the checkout.

20 degree temperature threshold

6th August 2019 by Paul Merry

20 degree temperature threshold

20 degree temperature threshold 1

In my years as a baker, and more particularly as a sourdough man, I have found that there is a great significance to 20 degree temperature thresehold when regarding the ambient temperature of your bakery or kitchen. Below 20 C there is a steady development of sponges and leavens and you can plan how much yeast to use for the given number of hours that you want sponges and leavens to sit maturing.

Winter temperatures

In winter, of course, it is a constant battle to keep ambient temperatures up, and my teaching bakery is always hanging around a cool 14 C until it is a full-on baking day when I can bump it up to 18 C. In the depths of winter the flour comes over from the mill at below 10 C, and the ground water is coming out of the tap at only 7 C. It is easy to make the dough too cold in those conditions. Away from winter it is more pleasant as temperatures rise, and with ambient and flour temperature in the 16-18 region work in the bakery fits comfortably to plans and schedules.

Summer temperatures

Dough thermometer
Dough thermometer

However, come summer, and see the overnight ambient at 21 C and you know things are suddenly to go haywire. The groundwater is coming in at 17, and the flour on the stand (or your pantry) will also be 21 degrees. The thermometer shows that the finished dough temperature is 21-22C, which shows that the friction of the big arms of the mixing machine diving through the dough has added a couple of degrees, hence the coolness of the water is nullified. Now you can see why in summer, when professional bakery temp sits on 25 deg or more, bakers must use refrigerated water.

I am happy enough with 22 degrees for large doughs, that is what we look for with the amount of yeast planned. But I could only succeed to get it by running the dough water straight from the cold tap.

White sponge

White sponge
White sponge

However, it is more tricky to control the white sponge and the sourdough wheat leaven sitting out at 21 degrees for 11 – 12 hours overnight. The sponge was so developed that a big whiff of alcohol rose when its lid was taken off. This picture shows its open texture, and you can see that it has started to deteriorate. At overnight 21 degrees it was probably ready at a mere 7 or 8 hours, not the 11 to 12. Yet its yeast was only 0.3 of 1%. It should have been 0.1%, which would only cover your thumbnail.

Sourdough leaven

Now to look at the sourdough leavens. This wheat one has behaved alright. Such openness and array of decent bubbles it is telling us that it is perfectly ready, but not over-wrought or damaged.

Sourdough wheat leaven made with brown flour
Sourdough wheat leaven made with brown flour (81% extraction)

To sit maturing for the 11 hours overnight, the wheaten leaven was seeded with a blob of common leaven that was less than 1 % of its bulk. (80 grams for a 10 kg Production leaven). When I arrived at 6:00 am and looked at it I would have preferred that it needed another hour to continue maturing because then I would have time to make a large autolyse dough to sit for an hour. But when it is developed and ripe like this photo shows, no time to be doing other jobs first.

Next week, if bakery temp is again 21-odd, it will be inoculated with a mere 0.6% of leaven. ( When the ambient temperature is a calm 17-18 degrees, the amount of seeding yeast for its overnight 11 hours is more like 2.5%).

Rye production leaven

Wet leaven shining in the middle
Wet leaven shining in the middle

And now to look at the rye Production leaven, after 3 days at 21C. Lately, it has to spend so long before use because we have to overcome the current problems of over-abundant enzymes from last summer’s difficult harvest conditions here in the south of England. It must be grossly acidic to counter the over-abundant amylase enzymes that will produce too much dextrin in the pure rye loaf as it bakes, causing it to have a soggy, sugary middle, and usually a horrible hole too. Often, after three days at 21 degrees, the rye leaven will have grown mould on its surface carpet. For this photo I have gently scraped the carpet aside and you can see the wet leaven shining in the middle.

In other years during hot spells I have noticed that the mould arrives when ambient temperatures are steadily over 20, so for the rest of this hot summer I shall hold my breath and hope that I remain lucky about the mould issue.

Autolyse

2nd August 2019 by Paul Merry

Autolyse

Autolyse 2
Autolsye

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.

Pages: 1 2

Kneading dough

31st July 2019 by Paul Merry

Kneading dough

Kneading dough 3
Kneading dough

Kneading dough does not mean mixing. Mixing would be an appropriate term for simply gathering together the components of a dough or, appropriately for this treatise on kneading, for making a dough with rye flour, or barley flour, where there is virtually no gluten present. The point about “kneading” is that it is a purpose verb, which refers to the process of development of dough, in particular, dough made with wheat flour. Proper development means initially the formation of gluten, to be followed by the process of teasing and manipulating that gluten until it is a well-formed and stretchy entity. That process is done by the task of kneading.

Pages: 1 2
  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • …
  • 13
  • Next Page »

BAKER’S TOPICS

  • 20 degree temperature threshold
  • A New Approach To Sourdough Wheat Leaven
  • Autolyse
  • Bagels and the water bath
  • Baker’s Tip: Coarser flours take more water
  • Baker’s Tip: Simple Plaiting
  • Baker’s Tip:. Quantities of different yeasts
  • Baking on a tile
  • Chelsea Buns
  • Dough fermentation: The Fold
  • EASTER BAKING
  • Finishing a cob
  • Firing a cold oven
  • Flour too strong?
  • Green dough
  • How To Make The Devonshire Split
  • Kneading dough
  • Kugelhopf – popular in the Alsace
  • Large ovens: separate furnace or fire on the floor?
  • Making a cob (Part 1)
  • Making the Round Shape, Both Loose and Tight – Part 1
  • Making the Round Shape, Both Loose and Tight – Part 3
  • Malt, Maltose, Malt Products
  • Oxygen in dough
  • Plaiting
  • Plaiting – Part I
  • Poolish
  • Read Paul’s views on “craft”, as they appeared recently in two published articles
  • Rolling Olives & Oil Into Finished Dough
  • Salt
  • Scalded flour
  • Shaping for a tin
  • Stollen
  • Stoneground Flour
  • Sweet pastry
  • Table skills – Part I
  • Table skills – Part II
  • Temperature chart
  • The “ferment”
  • The baguette
  • The Chelsea Bun
  • The Country Housewife’s Outdoor Cloche Oven, 1897
  • Types Of Yeast
  • Understanding acidity & sourness
  • Use of the Sponge
  • Volume in a loaf
  • Water temperature and yeast
  • Wedding Rolls: How to Make Them
  • What’s special about wood-fired ovens?
  • Working with stoneground flour
PANARY - Teaching Breadmaking Since 1997
Teaching Breadmaking Since 1997
Every PANARY course is taught by Paul Merry, a master craftsman who favours a very practical approach to learning, regardless of any student’s prior experience..

Helpful Information

  • Cann Mills – Working Watermill
  • Which Course To Select?
  • Testimonials
  • Learn to bake
  • Gift vouchers
  • Accommodation

PANARY Mailing List

PANARY - Teaching Breadmaking Since 1997
For baking tips and special offers.
JOIN MAILING LIST

Contact PANARY

To contact Paul Merry, or speak with him, please ring +44 (0)1747 851102, email using ,  or visit our contact page.

Copyright © 2021 · PANARY

  • Terms of Service
  • Refund Policy
  • Privacy Policy
panary adj [L.panis bread + - ARY] Of or pertaining to bread; p. fermentation