Reading a recipe for gluten free muffins, the person added food grade glycerin to help maintain moisture. Doing a brief search, I found it is a vegetable oil byproduct and natural. No place could I find anything else about its uses excepI use it as an addative when making fondant.  I would like to know more about it's uses.   Basically how to use it!  - proportions

I want to do more with whole grain 'healthy' muffins as well as gluten free.  I am baking muffins for an adult day center and there seem to be a lot of older folks whith dentures and diabetes.  The owner cooks lunch and the health dept guidelines say no 'white' sugar.  At least they are getting something right!   The people to my knowledge, don't have gluten intolerence, but I have read that wheat is bad for diabetes (high glycemic?), so I thought of incorporating the two into a 'healthy hybrid'.  The gums used in gluten free are also natural products that I have seen listed many times on commercial bread labels I expect they help retain moisture also.  

Alternative baking?  

I'm interested in the technical aspects of the Science of Baking .... 

Please share your own knowledge and expertise, and any online sources (articles, books or videos) that explain the science behind baking, like things that make the dough sticky, or not so sticky, hold the dough together, or on the other hand, things that cause problems, bringing out the flavor of a particular ingredient or spice .... 

My main interest right now is different kinds of breads, mostly breads with fruit, or yams/sweet potatoes, potatoes, and nuts.

I like to use Whole Wheat Flour, and also mix different kinds of grains (Corn Grits, Corn Meal, Oatmeal, Granola, Wheat Flour). I'm also thinking of experimenting with Scottish Oats, Barley, Quinoa, Millet .... 

I'd like to learn some of the basic science of baking, so I can experiment more .... searching for those perfect recipes .... !!!

-- Jim

I'm a 'returning' baker.  I did a short tour of duty at friends' Tassajara-inspired breadshop startup in the early 70's, but hadn't made a loaf since, until my son miracled me Lahey last year.  NKB broke the ice, but didn't cut the mustard for flavor & texture.  So I'm studying Reinhart, Magee, Buehler et al. to up my game.  I have a question that none has answered.  I apologize in advance for how long this post will probably be.

More preface:  I teach university-level botany, including the  physiology and enzymology of the hydrolytic reactions that release stored, polymerized substrates when a cereal seed imbibes water.  Reinhart is warmly inspring in his fascination with enzymes and his  consequent advocacy of pre-ferments.  But there's something about soakers in particular that contradicts botanical dogma.

Imbibition of water by cereal seeds (barley being the longstanding research model here) allows the stored hormone gibberellin to diffuse from the embryo ('germ' in baker-speak) through the endosperm to its outermost aleurone layer where it binds to protein receptors in aleurone cells.  That binding sets in motion a series of biochemical reactions that ultimately result in starch-degrading enzymes being made de novo in, and secreted from, aleurone cells.  Among these enzymes are the amylases familiar to anyone reading this.  Other stored polymers -- proteins, fats, nucleic acids -- are also hydrolyzed by newly syntheized and secreted aleurone enzymes.  So far so good -- Botany 101 cereal seed germination physiology.

As far as I know, these aleurone-synthesized hydrolytic enzymes do not exist in desiccated cereal grains of the sort we mill into bread flour.  They only get made (to be precise, translated de novo from messenger RNAs) in intact seeds that have imbibed water that allowed diffusion of the hormonal signal from the embryo.  This implies that there shouldn't be any amylase enzyme activity in a soaker consisting of flour and milk, soy milk, buttermilk, etc., unless the milk introduces them.  I don't recall any writers claiming that.  So where do soakers' hydrolytic activities come from?  Addition of yeast or diastatic malt changes everything of course.  But I'm talking basic liquid+flour soakers.

On the other hand, if sprouted grains are used in a soaker, and perhaps importantly, if they are gently mashed first, to release these enzymes to better expose the flour's starch to them, then the latter might indeed be acted upon by aleurone enzymes to release simpler sugars (read: flavors) from the flour. (I'm dying to try this)

So why do soakers work?  Starch-hydrolytic enzymes should not be present in them, because the cellular integrity of the seed that is required to initiate their synthesis is destroyed in milling.  Empirically of course, soakers do work.  It isn't the milk: I've used ultrapasteurized (Meijer organic -- good!) milk in my Reinhart soakers with delicious results.  Ultrapasturization oughta nuke any enzymatic activities for sure.  Is my dogmatic view of germination and amylases overly simplistic, ignoring rogue amylases conveniently present in milled grain?  Or are these writers giving enzymes more credit than they're due, ignoring some non-enzymatic, physical process?

Sorry for the verbosity.  Incorrigible.  I have more questions, but they can wait.  Thanks.

I am located in China and currently use "Lam Soon" flour from Hong Kong, such us Golden Statue.

I need your expertise in comparison of different types of bread flour from this company. I want to find an optimal flour blend for baguette.

Thank you for your time.

Over the past few years my bread has gotten better and better.  I am so much more comfortable in all aspects of baking but I seem unable to improve my shaping techniques.  Would a class be the best way to get better in this area or is there some other recommendation to help me with my shaping skills.

Hello all,

I recently stumbled upon fresh yeast cakes that are exposed to light, thereby creating Vitamin D.  Here's a quote from the manufacturer of the yeast:

"Lallemand’s yeast is exposed to a source of light during the regular production process that naturally transforms the sterols present in yeast into vitamin D."

Ok, so why not sourdough? If I leave my starter out to warm in the sunlight, and I leave my sourdough bread out to rise in the sun, perhaps there too is a source of Vitamin D.  Anyone seen or heard of any research that has been done on sunlight and sourdough?

Thank you. 

Just picked up Hamelman's "Bread" for the first time in a while, and notice he uses a LOT of preferment in his formulas. I want to crank up the amount I use (right now, I tend to use between 15 and 25% of flour weight), but I have a pretty specific question. To make things easier as I mix by hand using a dough whisk, before I add the liquid ingredients to my flour et. al., I add the pâte fermentée to the water/liquid ingredients, and mix it into a uniform solution using an immersion "stick" blender. Since I'm adding the pre-ferment for flavour, I'm guessing it shouldn't affect those elements that add flavour - does anyone know different? Thanks!

Hi all, new to the forums but have been baking in my home for about 4 years now.   This place has been a very valuable resource over the years, so thank you all for that.

My reason for posting is lately I have been wondering if sourdough cultures are perhaps affected by too many variables to be maintained consistently in the home.  I have mainly been using the Ischia Italian starter from Ed Wood.

My main issues so far have been in flavor consistency with my experiments with the Ischia Italian culture.   I try to maintain as many variables as possible.  I have a cooler that I converted into a proof box complete with external temperature guage and a variable light bulb that doubles as a culture and dough proof box.   I tend to bake each weekend and refrigerate the culture between uses.  I try to follow the same procedure each time for activating the culture before my Saturday bakes, but I still cannot get a consistent flavor from the starter.

Now, I must say I haven't produced any bread that wasn't delicious, but sometimes the starter produces this most excellent flavor, I wouldn't even call it sour, but it is just something I have never tasted before in a bread.  I cannot really describe as there is nothing I can compare it too.  I can only imagine this is the true flavor of the Ischia starter.  However, many other times the bread does not have this special flavor, and while still delicious, I find myself wondering if I could not have achieved similar results (flavor-wise) with commerical yeast.

The flavor when I tease it out is so good that is borderline addicting and each weekend I hope for another encounter with this elusive starter, but the failures greatly outnumber the success.  I know there is some controversy over whether local organisms take over eventually but I have been using this same strain for over a year now and still manage to tease that same flavor out from time to time.   Perhaps the local organisms have already taken over or it is the original strain, but either way I am still having the same difficulty with flavor consistency.

My hope is that I still need to refine my techniques and I would love to hear if people have this problem reproducing that special flavor from their sourdough starters, or what you attribute to your success. 

I wanted to test the differences between Mello Judith flour and Antico Molino
Caputo Tipo 00 flour  for use in my modded ciabatta pizza recipe here:

http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/f10/gt40s-slow-rise-pizza-dough-16669.html#post120258

Both seem to be close on the protein levels:

Protein level listed for Mello Judith: Protein 11.8 +/- 0.3%

Protein level on Forno Bravo: 11-12% and on Amazon: Protein content 11.5%

I started a side by side comparison test to try and quantify the differences.  

Yesterday I made 2 batches of pre-dough sponge- one with Antico Tipo OO Chef's flour and the other with Mello Judith.  First I weighed out the water- 500g x2= 1000g total. I put it in one container and dissolved a total of4g of yeast into the water.  Added a teaspoon of malted barley syrup and stirred till the yeast and syrup were dissolved. I figured by making one batch and splitting it in half, both batches would get the same barley syrup and yeast in the water. Next I weighed 500g of each type of flour and mixed it one at the time with equal amounts of the water yeast syrup mixture so that I had two batches and put them in their own container. I measured everything out with a scale accurate to 10th of a gram and each container contains 500g flour, 500g water + the yeast and syrup that was dissolved in the water. I let them sit at room temp around 75 degrees for an hour and then let them slow ferment in the refrigerator for 24 hours and here is the result:

As you can see, the Mello Judith rose a lot more even though it had exactly the same amount of yeast, water, barley syrup for the same amount of time and temp.  I was surprised to see such a big difference under exactly the same conditions.  Any thoughts or suggestions on why there is so much difference  would be appreciated.

gt40

Probably everyone heard about autolyse technique. Recently I read about Tang Zhong method. Do you know other interesting methods/techniques which can improve flavor or give other benefits.

Sorry for my english but I still learn.