The Fresh Loaf

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Sean Leyton and Luci's Bread

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seanhill

Sean Leyton and Luci's Bread



In Ms. Lawrence’s 3rd period,  we are trying to create the best recipe for bread using science. On our first day we researched the science behind making bread. We learned cellular respiration occurs in the mitochondria of the cell, and has two different forms anaerobic and aerobic.Aerobic requires oxygen and anaerobic is used when there is no oxygen.The equation for cellular respiration is c6h12o6+6o2→6co2+6h2o+ATP. This transfers over to bread making because yeast is a living organism that experiences cellular respiration. At first it is aerobic producing co2 and water causing the bread to rise. This doesn’t last very long. Then when oxygen runs out it turns to alcoholic fermentation, which produces alcohol and co2 in the bread. The alcohol cooked out when the bread is placed in high temperatures. After doing this research we decided to research ingredients that we could possibly put in the bread.

 

The first ingredient we looked at was flour and what flour does to the bread. What we learned was that when the water was added to flour it hydrates the Gliadin and Glutenin proteins which stretch and produce gluten. The gluten later on expands during the respiration and makes the bread elastic and expandable. Flour also plays apart in the carbon cycle since it comes from wheat which undergoes photosynthesis it will have some leftover carbon. So when we eat the bread we are taking in co2 and then later on after cellular respiration we will exhale it back into the air. The flour also plays a part in the yeasts alcoholic fermentation. Since wheat goes through photosynthesis it will have some glucose. This will provide food for the yeast to undergo cellular respiration.

 

The next ingredient we looked at was yeast, yeast is extremely important because it is what produces the co2 through cellular respiration at first then goes in to anaerobic alcoholic fermentation. This produces co2 and alcohol, unlike yeast humans go into lactic acid fermentation when they run out of oxygen but mostly use aerobic/cellular respiration. The co2 that the yeast produces causes the bread to rise and expand. This also plays a part in the co2 cycle the yeast is putting co2 into the bread which humans then eat and then breathe out the co2 back into the atmosphere. Another ingredient we looked at was sugar, we learned that it is food for the yeast to allow it to do cellular respiration and produce the co2 we need to cause the bread to rise. One of the most important ingredients we researched was water. We found out that it allows the yeast to multiply and also allows the flour to turn into gluten.

 

Lastly we looked at some alternate ingredients like salt and fats . Salt actually slows down the respiration process so we didn't want to add that to our bread. Fats like oil and butter are good for making the bread last longer but we are eating ours the day we make the dough so we don't need that. Once we researched our ingredients it was time to make a recipe and test it. The recipe we used for the test was as follows:

1 tablespoon of sugar

½ cup of flour

¼ teaspoon of yeast

4 tablespoons of water 120 to 130 degrees .

The reason we went we these amounts was based on a couple ratios we learned from research. The first ratio was ½ cup of sugar to 4 cups of flour after doing some math we found that for ½ cup of flour we should add one tablespoon of sugar. The second ratio was for flour to yeast which was 4 cups of flour to 2 and ¼ teaspoons of yeast, since we needed to fit this into a cupcake liners we needed to decrease this so we did some math and got ½ cup of flour to around ¼ teaspoon of yeast. We went with the suggested amount of water because after further research it seemed the most logical to work.After coming up with our ingredients we then moved on to the next step which was to make the procedure for our test bread.

Procedure:

1. In a ziploc baggie, mix together ¼ teaspoon yeast and ¼ cup of the flour and 1 tablespoon of sugar  

2. Heat 4 tablespoons of water to 120 °F - 130 °F

3. Slowly add the 4 tablespoons of heated water to the baggie and stir to combine.

4. Let mixture set for 10 minutes, to activate yeast.

5. Mix in the remaining ¼ cup flour in the baggie.

6. Take dough ball out of baggie.

7. Knead dough for 1 minute.

8. Roll dough into a ball.

9. Place dough ball under heat lamp

The reason we didn’t add all the flour at once was to allow the yeast to activate and multiply before adding in more flour.

Here are some pictures of us making our test sample:






Results of our test sample:

Our test sample began to rise at a decent rate in the first 10 minutes but then began to slow down and stop rising. We found out from our test sample was that we kneaded the dough to much and added to much extra flour to help need the dough. This caused our dough to be very dense and would not have made the best possible bread. So we decided the next day to keep the amount of ingredients the same but to time our kneading to around 1 minute no longer. Also to not add as much flour on our hands before removing the dough a pinch is suggested.

(started at ¾ and inch this picture was taken  5 minutes after being placed under the lamps)



Now it was day 3 and it was time to make our final product. After analyzing our dough from the day before. We decided to keep our recipe and procedure the same other than when we got to the kneading part. We decided to be more strict on how long we kneaded our dough and used less flour while kneading to prevent the mistake from the day before which was the fact that our dough was way to dense.

 

Recipe:

1 tablespoon of sugar

½ cup of flour

¼ teaspoon of yeast

4 tablespoons of water 120 to 130 degrees .

 

Procedure:

1. In a ziploc baggie, mix together ¼ teaspoon yeast and ¼ cup of the flour and 1 tablespoon of sugar  

2. Heat 4 tablespoons of water to 120 °F - 130 °F

3. Slowly add the 4 tablespoons of heated water to the baggie and stir to combine.

4. Let mixture set for 10 minutes, to activate yeast.

5. Mix in the remaining ¼ cup flour in the baggie.

6. Take dough ball out of baggie.

7. Knead dough for 1 minute.

8. Roll dough into a ball.

9. Place dough ball under heat lamp

 

 

 

Here are pictures of us preparing the dough that we are going to bake:

 

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Now it was time to put them in the oven. We ran out of class time so we had to wait till the next day to eat our bread. So it was finally day 4 and we got to see our final product.

Here it is:20170310_112633.jpg20170310_112649.jpg

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What did we think of our bread?

When we first  got to see our bread we were happy because it had looked like it had risen and cooked very well. Then Ms.Lawrence started passing out the bread and we felt ours. What we felt was not what we expected and we were very disappointed. It felt really tough and not the soft bread we were looking for. It was definitely very dense but had a really good smell to it. Then we ripped it apart and tasted it. It definitely was not the flavor we were going for, it tasted like stale hawaiian bread. After tasting it we decided to talk about what we would different to fix the texture and taste. We came up with first to add more water to make the bread a little softer and more moist. Next we would add some oil so the bread would stay fresher longer and lastly we would add some salt to give the bread a little more flavor than it had. We had a great time making this bread and would have loved to be able to perfect it.