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Scalded flour

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Scalded flour bread

Making scalded flour in a saucepan

The scalding of flour involves taking aside a portion of the flour in a bread recipe and stirring very hot water into it. The flour starch is gelatinised in the process, and adding the gelatinised starch to the dough imparts different and special qualities to the fermenting dough and the finished bread.

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To be gelatinised means that it is made soluble, and in this form as a carbohydrate it becomes readily accessible to the yeast. The scalded material in the dough will give added plasticity to both the crumb and the crust, which is an important feature when making bread without much gluten, such as rye bread. This plasticity also makes the kneading of the dough much easier.

Moisture retention and shelf life

The most noticeable feature of scalded bread is that it retains moisture for much longer. Its “shelf life” may be improved by two days or more. The effect of gelatinising means that the starch is capable of binding more water to itself during doughmaking.

The effect of adding gelatinised (soluble) starch to the fermentation phase of the dough is that it speeds it up. If brisker fermentation is not wanted, the effect is then that less yeast will be needed, and it is always a good thing to be using less yeast. Fermentation is enhanced because the soluble, gelatinised material is “damaged” starch which must be present for the amylase enzymes to attack the starch and convert it to maltose, which in turn other enzymes will convert to glucose which is the class of sugar that the yeast needs to feed on. In the normal bread-making process the damaged starch comes from the destructive force of milling. With the scalded material there is simply more damaged starch added to the mix.

Whisking near-boiling water into wheat flour is known to do a certain amount of damage to the protein in the flour, and eventually, this damage impairs the amount and quality of the gluten that these proteins are capable of forming. This inherent damage to protein and gluten is probably the reason why flour scalding has never caught on in the wheat bread baking cultures, despite the marvellous retention of moisture. Scalding is more commonly found with rye breads, and sometimes with spelt.

How to make scalded flour

For rye and spelt my guide is:

  • put aside about one-quarter  (ranging from 20-25%) of the flour for scalding
  • apply to it at least double its weight with the very hot water

Put it in a sturdy bowl and bring the boiling water to it, to be stirred in vigorously with a heavy spoon. It is an arm tiring task, and you must keep at it until it is smooth. It can wait to be applied to the doughmaking after an hour, or up to 24 hours. At around an hour check that it has cooled sufficiently to be usable without harming the yeast or making an unnecessarily hot dough.

More of my “rules of thumb” to apply when doughmaking for rye and spelt:

  • have the weight of the new flour roughly the same weight as the total of the scalding
  • remove from the normal amount of doughmaking water a little over half the amount of water used for the scalding. (If you failed to remove any at all the finished dough would be unmanageably sloppy. You must accommodate for the extra water that has gone into the scalding process).

If you enjoy putting some scalded material in a white dough made with strong bread flour, use only about 15% of the flour for the scalding, with twice its weight in the boiling water as usual.

I have carefully measured all the water that went into a small roll dough made with strong white wheat flour, including a small parcel of scalded flour that used 15% of the flour. One kilo of that flour would normally take 650 ml water to make dough of the correct softness.  The total water that went into the one kilo flour mix with the scalding was 780 ml.

Swedish style

In Sweden, a recommended method is to make the rye scalding with much more water so that the gelatinised material finishes as a runny paste that has a twofold purpose: most of it is put in the dough, while the rest is used as a glaze on the rye loaves heading into the oven.  To make this runny paste the ratio of hot water to rye flour is 4:1, even 5:1.

Good baking, Panarians.

Paul

Bagels and the water bath

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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

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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

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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.

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