12 Steps of Bread Making

For the past week, I've attended two bread courses which I believe has earning potential when I migrate to the US.  If you've been following my blog, I'm into breads more than cakes.  Even if I've been attending bread making classes for quite some time, never did my instructors mentioned the 12 steps of bread making.  These steps are essential and quite practical for beginner bread enthusiasts.

The 12 steps are as follow:

1.  Selecting your ingredients:  make sure to choose the best quality and unexpired ingredients.  If you choose to use instant yeast, do a test before you bake breads to ensure that your yeast is still active.  You wouldn't want to rest your dough for a long time without any rise.

2.  Weigh ingredients:  it is very important to be accurate with your ingredients.  You wouldn't want to kill your yeast because of too much salt or too hot water.  Best to sift your flour as it gives a softer dough.  Also, it's best to set all your measured ingredients in the order that you will use them to ensure that you don't miss an ingredient.

3.  Mixing/kneading:  When you mix your ingredients and you're using instant dry yeast, the sugar and yeast should be beside each other in the bowl while the salt is in the opposite side.  Kneading your dough develops gluten which promotes elasticity.  Kneading also distributes the yeast cells uniformly.

4.  Fermentation:  the most favorable temperature to ferment your dough is at 80°F / 27°C to 82°F / 28°C.   The length of fermentation period depends on the amount of yeast in the dough and temperature of the room. 

5.  Punching / folding over:  to confirm if your dough is fermented properly, when you press your finger into the dough it gradually bounces back.  You will then expel the gas from the dough by punching it down.  Around 3 to 5 punches will do.  The process of punching or folding over will expel gas which moves the yeast cells to new food supply, equalizes the dough temperature and keeps dough sweet.

6.  Scaling:  assures correct yields of dough pieces for dividing.  

7.  Dividing:  separates dough into equal portions for either rolls (small divider) or breads (large divider).   After you divide the dough, cover it in a damp cloth and shape the dough into round balls.  

8.  Intermediate (Bench) Proofing:  at this stage, you allow the dough to recover from dividing.  It relaxes the dough for molding.  Make sure that you don't let it rest on the table for more than 20 mins.

9.  Molding:  Forming the soft, pliable proofed dough into desired forms (loafs/rolls).  

10.  Panning:  After you mold the dough, place it in cookie sheets or baking pans for final proofing.  Make sure that you cover the dough in cling wrap or damp cloth.

11.  Pan Proofing:  Also known as final proofing.  At this fermentation stage, it will give the dough an even grain and good volume.  Ideal proof box has humidity of 85% and temperature of  90°F / 32°C to 95°F 35°C.

12.  Baking:  temperatures on baking breads vary depending on the dough.  The heavier the dough, the longer the bake time.

I didn't realize that there are 12 steps in bread making.  Once I look back to my recipes, I noticed that indeed they all go through these steps.  Happy baking!

Photo credits:  bakingdom, shutterstock, salt and serenity