Honey Bread Honors Biology Group 1 Period 3
Bread Blog
Are you guys bready to roll? In this blog session we are going to share our experience in making bread for the first time. Our group consists of Emi (me), Izzy our chemist and Katie our photographer. Katie has told us that her mom’s bread is amazing, so we decided to use her recipe for our bread. Katie, Emi and Izzy- Group 1 and this is our bread journey.
Procedure:
Day one (3/7/17): Group 1- we chose our recipe that we wanted to use to create our bread. We decided on a recipe that Katie’s mom uses, because apparently it is delicious.
After we chose the recipe we had to convert the measurements (this was so awful). This was definitely Emi’s least favorite part!!
Day two (3/8/17): This is the day that we are going to test our bread recipe.
We started out with a zip lock bag
We measured ¼ a cup of flour Following that we added ¼ of a teaspoon of yeast.
After we had the yeast and flour, we microwaved 4 tablespoons of water at 120 degrees fahrenheit, to activate the yeast.
After combining these 3 ingredients, you must let the back sit for 10 minutes to let the yeast activate.
Once our 10 minutes were up, you then add another ¼ cup of flour to the baggie.
Then we added all of our extra ingredients to the mixture. Our extra ingredients were butter, salt, and honey.
This is our honey.
This is the butter
Then finally this is our salt
After all of the ingredients were mixed together in our baggie, then we took the dough out, laid the dough on wax paper and Izzy started to knead the dough. We didn’t really know exactly how to knead, so we were more or less rolling the dough around. Once Izzy “kneaded” the dough for about a minute, she rolled the dough in a ball and set the dough under a lamp for 30 minutes.
We checked the dough every 5 minutes, to see how the lamp and heat changed the dough. We didn’t take a picture of every 5 minute interval, but over time we noticed that the dough definitely grew height wise and got more dense.
At the end of the 30 minutes we took the dough back to our seats and we pulled the dough apart to analyze. The dough was too wet, so we concluded that we did not have enough flour. You can tell that there was definitely CO2 happening, because of all of the air bubbles, but the dough is really wet. Izzy ended up eating most of the dough which included a nice helping of being criticized by Ms. Lawrence for eating the dough!
Day 3 (3/9/17): Now that we know what we did wrong from yesterday, today we are making our final bread. We are doing the exact same process as we did yesterday, but we have decided to add more flour to our dough. We also melted the butter
When we were making our dough we made sure to add more flour but when Izzy kneaded the dough, the dough looked too dense so we will see.
We are currently waiting, and waiting and waiting to see how the dough turns out.
With 10 minutes left Emi checked our bread and you could tell that this bread was rising muchhhhh better than it was yesterday. The bread was definitely more dense, but we are still a little bit worried that the dough will be too dense. The top image is the first day, and the bottom image is day 2. There is a definite difference in the two doughs.
Our dough to the looks of it had risen pretty nicely, we had set the dough in a cupcake wrapper and put it in a baking tin.
3/10/17
We got our bread back and we were so happy with it!! The bread was gone in like 2 minutes!
Bread Reflection
3/10/17
We got our bread back today. The bread was a little dry and crummy. The bread was very hard on the outside, so we thought that the bread was going to be hard on the inside. The inside was softer and had a spongy feeling. The color of the bread was really nice on the outside, golden and was a little bit of dark brown. The color also got lighter on the bread the further into the cupcake wrapper you go. When you torn apart the bread you could also hear a little bit of a ripping sound. All three of us tasted the bread and the taste was very gooodddd. The bread of course was colder and harder than it should've been considering that the bread was baked yesterday. The taste was very good, but a little dry. You can definitely taste the sweetness from the honey, and it strong flour flavor. The final product was overall very tasty.
This is our recipe we used for our bread
Flour: ½ cup
Yeast: ½ teaspoon
Honey: 1 ½ teaspoons
Butter: 1.2 teaspoons
Salt: ¼ teaspoon
Water: 4 tablespoons
The science behind it all
In our Honors Biology class we have been studying about cellular respiration, the two different paths that cellular respiration can take- anaerobic and aerobic, and we also learned about the Carbon Cycle. Glycolysis is the first step in converting glucose. In glycolysis, 2 ATP are created and the glucose turns to pyruvate. After pyruvate, if there is oxygen present then the substance goes through aerobic respiration which is when cellular respiration occurs. If the substance does not have oxygen, anaerobic respiration occurs which can go 2 ways, lactic acid fermentation or alcoholic fermentation. Lactic acid fermentation occurs in humans when the person is working out a muscle. The lactic acid builds up in that muscle because the person is working hard and needs enough oxygen to support the body. Alcoholic fermentation occurred in our situation with the bread because this is what happens in yeast. The products of alcoholic fermentation are carbon dioxide and alcohol. When the yeast goes through alcoholic fermentation, since carbon dioxide is a gas, this makes the bread rise because of the air. This is why you see air bubbles or holes in the bread.
The chemical equation of Cellular Respiration is C6H12O6 + O6 ----> 6CO2 + 6H2O + ATP. Cellular Respiration takes place in the Mitochondria, or “powerhouse” of the cells. Cellular respiration itself is not related to bread making, because cellular respiration is more on the line of changing glucose to make energy for the cells to use.
The flour we used in the dough came from a wheat plant. Since plants are autotrophs, it uses the sun to make its food which is called photosynthesis. Photosynthesis’ chemical equation is the opposite of cellular respiration, 6CO2 + 6H2O + sunlight---->C6H12O6 + O6, which means that is produces glucose. This glucose is what is used in aerobic and anaerobic respiration which is how it relates to the bread making. The Carbon Cycle is cellular respiration (which produces carbon dioxide, energy, and water in the animal) ----> photosynthesis (which produces glucose and oxygen in plants) ----> back to cellular respiration. The yeast when cooked releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which plants can use for photosynthesis. In the what plant, they undergo photosynthesis so the cycle is continuous.
What was our rationale behind these ingredients?
For our recipe we kept most of the original ingredients but decided to switch out the sugar for a 1 ½ teaspoon of honey. We used honey as a substitute because honey makes the bread softer and makes the bread stay fresher for a longer period of time. Then for the fat in the recipe we decided to use 1 teaspoon of butter. We chose butter because of the added flavor and the ability to keep the dough from becoming too elastic, we also chose it because it helps with keeping the texture and controls how the yeast rises. Next ingredient is salt. We put salt into our recipe for it’s ability to tighten the gluten structure and for the flavor. We only added ¼ teaspoon because too much salt could kill the yeast or slow it down too much. Then we have one of the most important ingredients, yeast. We needed yeast so that it would do alcoholic fermentation and allow the dough to rise. We added 1/4 teaspoon of yeast to our recipe so there wouldn’t be too much yeast which would rise the bread too fast and create too much gluten. Next we have flour, flour is the main base in the recipe. The flour contains gluten which holds the dough together. We only used ½ cup of flour so that our dough would not end up being too dense. The very last thing is water. We used water as our liquid in the dough, we also need water to help break down sugars and enzymes. Only use 4 Tbsps of water so the dough does not end up too moist.
