December 11, 2010 - 6:33pm
Lean or enriched
At what percent fat does a bread go from being considered lean to enriched? I think "rich" is over 20%, but I have not seen the cutoff point for a lean bread if any fat at all is allowed. I ask this question because I have ben adding fat to my SD breads and my commercial yeasted breads. The crust and crumb have both improved, but I do not want to be cheating myself out of correct fermentation, steaming and baking by improving the quality with fat instead of time and technique.
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a lean dough has "little or no fat or added enrichments". An enriched dough "has some fat, dairy, eggs or sugar". He also says that "Rich dough includes breads with more than 20 percent fat to flour ratio". See Page 45 of The Bread Bakers Apprentice.
Where that leaves you in your quest for good bread, I don't know. There is certainly nothing wrong with using enrichments (brioche, anyone?). Nor are lean breads the holy grail of the baker. What do you want to achieve? What do your customers want to buy? What tastes good? What do the governing authorities have to say about particular classifications?
Best wishes.
Paul
Thanks Paul, I think I will cary along with my current use of fat but I find it strange that Reinheart says Lean is little or no, and does not give a percentage. Yet he gives a percentage for rich dough.
I would have guessed that a lean dough would have no enrichments, unless one counts things like bean or nut flours as flours rather than fat sources. Even that is wild speculation on my part.
Paul