Baking Note: The importance of salt in bread making
(dated 15 August 2013)
Bread with no salt taste flat and bland. Salt controls part of the fermentation process of the dough. Apart from this, the bread is very crumbly and coarse.
During the process in dough preparation, the dough is harder to handle. Its mixing process quicken and the dough is sticky to touch and you may think its under-mix or wrong ingredients proportion. Definitely a dough without salt is much harder to handle and it will stick to your hand even after the initial resting before you cut to mould.
With the addition of salt, the dough tightens, it becomes stronger, and not easy to tear. During fermentation, dough with salt rise more slowly. Salt strengthens, tightens and compacts the gluten protein network.
In theory, ideally the addition of salt in the dough is 2% of flour weight. Personally I will add a pinch of it if the person has a strict salt diet intake. My reason is, so long there's a little salt to bring the flavour of the bread. I don't like bread without salt as it has a weird feeling giving me an urge to vomit. I really feel not correct after eating bread with no salt.
Of course, there are some prepares bread dough entirely with no salt and its perfectly normal for strict diet with no salt.
If there's no special diet arrangement, I will not omit any salt in my dough. Salt improve the shell life of the bread and give a whiter crumb colour and prevent the bread from turning mouldy any earlier. With a balance ingredients ratio, my bread bake at home will last for 5 days. The day I bake is the first day and by 5th day, I will throw away any left over.
As I mentioned before, bread is not the easiest to learn and especially if its by hand method. I do have participants not succeeding in class. In any case, so long the bread could last for 3 days still soft, its consider a good bake. If the bread is soft on the first day and turn dry and hard on the 2nd day, it means the kneading process has a problem and I will need to rectify the hand kneading or machine knead method and prove timing.
Kneading in bread preparation means massage the dough and not tearing. Much care has to be taken when I learn bread making. Kneading technique is accumulated through a number of practice and trying and most of us will need to do it a number of tries before we tell ouselves, we know. Of course there's some are so genius, in one attempt they could produce great bread. But if you are a bread making person, as you knead often, you will find that at times, you will spot your own error or mistakes. All these are part of your experience in bread making and personally at times I find it very difficult to explain.
(below is a photo of the bread with no salt)
**note: crumb colour is lighter, crumbs are coasre. Taste is bland and smell stale.
Bread with no salt taste flat and bland. Salt controls part of the fermentation process of the dough. Apart from this, the bread is very crumbly and coarse.
During the process in dough preparation, the dough is harder to handle. Its mixing process quicken and the dough is sticky to touch and you may think its under-mix or wrong ingredients proportion. Definitely a dough without salt is much harder to handle and it will stick to your hand even after the initial resting before you cut to mould.
With the addition of salt, the dough tightens, it becomes stronger, and not easy to tear. During fermentation, dough with salt rise more slowly. Salt strengthens, tightens and compacts the gluten protein network.
In theory, ideally the addition of salt in the dough is 2% of flour weight. Personally I will add a pinch of it if the person has a strict salt diet intake. My reason is, so long there's a little salt to bring the flavour of the bread. I don't like bread without salt as it has a weird feeling giving me an urge to vomit. I really feel not correct after eating bread with no salt.
Of course, there are some prepares bread dough entirely with no salt and its perfectly normal for strict diet with no salt.
If there's no special diet arrangement, I will not omit any salt in my dough. Salt improve the shell life of the bread and give a whiter crumb colour and prevent the bread from turning mouldy any earlier. With a balance ingredients ratio, my bread bake at home will last for 5 days. The day I bake is the first day and by 5th day, I will throw away any left over.
As I mentioned before, bread is not the easiest to learn and especially if its by hand method. I do have participants not succeeding in class. In any case, so long the bread could last for 3 days still soft, its consider a good bake. If the bread is soft on the first day and turn dry and hard on the 2nd day, it means the kneading process has a problem and I will need to rectify the hand kneading or machine knead method and prove timing.
Kneading in bread preparation means massage the dough and not tearing. Much care has to be taken when I learn bread making. Kneading technique is accumulated through a number of practice and trying and most of us will need to do it a number of tries before we tell ouselves, we know. Of course there's some are so genius, in one attempt they could produce great bread. But if you are a bread making person, as you knead often, you will find that at times, you will spot your own error or mistakes. All these are part of your experience in bread making and personally at times I find it very difficult to explain.
(below is a photo of the bread with no salt)
**note: crumb colour is lighter, crumbs are coasre. Taste is bland and smell stale.
