February 17, 2012 - 6:26pm
Salt
I see in many videos and blogs and recipes, where I keep seeing people adding the salt to the dough almost at the end of the mix. I just wondering what does it do? what difference does it make to add salt to the dough once all the others ingredients are all mixed?
I normally mix the salt, together with the yeast and sugar in the flour. Anyway, if anybody knows, I do like to know why and if it is something that started to be practice lately.
Anyway, thank you in advance to all the comments.
Norman.
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Here's a pretty good treatise from King Arthur:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/professional/salt.html
Should answer some of your questions...
But I'm confuse, this is a quote of the article "When salt is added during the later stages of dough mixing, it can be detrimental to the carotenoids, which may become overoxidized" So, if it is detrimental why many people is doing it? it seems almost everybody is doing it.
Thanks for your info and comments.
Norman
note the "can be" and "may" in the sentence. This is a general statement. Do take into consideration that hand mixed doughs are rarely over mixed and that certain flours are barely mixed. So there are many recipes where this caution doesn't apply. Delaying salt speeds up fermentation.
Now if you have a friend who is allergic to carotene this can be a valuable tidbit.
Quite the general statement. Many factors can come into play as to when salt is added and you might consider the various flake sizes of salt and the speed at which they dissolve. Raymond Calvel played around with Autolysis and the need to adjust for stronger or weaker flours and when to add the salt. Wetter doughs seem to develop better when salt is added later. Small amounts of salt can be added to preferment's to slow down fermentation, if need be. As always the baker decides which method to use based on the desired final results.
Jim
Doing it this way, the bread will develop better flavor?
Norman.
You add salt later for a couple differetn reasons...
If you are using fresh yeast, you want to gives the yeast a little time alone in the dough while its mixing to warm up. Adding salt right away can greatly slow down the proofing of the bread.
Another reason is to help with gluten development. By mixing the ingreedients together then adding the salt, which is pretty rough stuff, you work the gluten pretty hard.
Or you could be doing an autolyse.
When I became a breadmaking tutor in the early 90s, one of my goals was to demystify breadmaking; to remove all the many myths that surround the whole procedure – which is, IMO, one of the simplest processes it’s possible to undertake in a kitchen – and show it for the easy, everyday craft that it is.
One of these myths is that ‘Salt is essential in breadmaking.’
Not true! There is a whole region of Italy (where they know a thing or two about making bread) where bread is made entirely without salt. It has been made this way for centuries – and yet the bread they produce is highly regarded. I’m talking about Tuscany:
http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/17/travel/tasty-tuscan-bread.html?pagewa
Salt, to me, is just like sugar in coffee – it’s very easy to train the palette to do without it. If you've had salt in your bread all your life, it's going to taste odd without it. But, give it a bit of time, and the real flavour of the bread comes through.
For myself I use 1% - or 1g per 100g of flour. I find that quite sufficient – but I can leave it out at any time.
Given this, you won’t be surprised to hear that I take that KA article with a pinch of salt (pun intended!).
“When salt is left out, the resulting dough is slack and sticky in texture, work-up is difficult, and bread volume is poor.”
I’m sorry, but that is complete rubbish. I defy anyone to compare two doughs, side by side, and tell me which contains salt and which doesn’t. On occasion, in the early days, I’ve had to taste a bread dough just to check I have included salt. I don't know of any other way.
"Bread baked without salt will have a flat and insipid taste." No it won’t – not if you make it properly!
“On the other hand, bread made with an excess of salt will be unpalatable.” Now that is true. As would any food similarly treated.
I could go on, but I haven’t the time. The bottom line is that the amount of salt anyone uses is subjective – it’s entirely up to you how much you use.
There’s a bit more about salt in bread on my blog:
http://nobreadisanisland.blogspot.com/2012/02/salt-in-bread.html
Hi Norman
The way to get more flavour into a bread - given that your flour is good quality - is to give it time. I've always abided by the principle that the longer flour and yeast have to mature together before baking, the more flavour will develop. And, of course, if you go down the sourdough route your bread will be full of flavour.
Just don't worry too much about the salt! :-D
Cheers, Paul
Paul for your comments. I actually was curious about why I was seeing a lot of people adding salt at the later stages of bread making, I always have added salt in the flour together with yeast and sugar. I don't have any problems with flavorful breads so far, hahaha, I was just curious about what I mentioned above. In fact, I just made a loaf adding salt at later stages and I did not see or taste the difference compare to my previous method.
I think in my case, I like to get proficient in slashing, proofing and creating the perfect surface tension on the breads. I think that plays a big part for making great breads.
Thank you again for your comments Paul!
Norman.
is *really awful* for me.
Sorry but I couldn't keep it. Tuscany is the confining region, I "tasted" plenty of tuscan bread when I was younger and it's something I wouldn't recommend to my worst enemy :-) Better eating a slurry of water and flour, instead. Yes, it's a matter of personale taste of course:)
Bread made without salt can really be slack and sticky, as in the quoted text. Italian flours (that 99% of the times are rubbish cake flour misused to make bread) behave exactly like that when you prepare a saltless bread because 1) they are too weak 2) protease enzymes run without the moderation of salt.
The statement:
“When salt is left out, the resulting dough is slack and sticky in texture, work-up is difficult, and bread volume is poor.”
is very true when the bread dough is thought to have contained salt and given longer proofing times. The resulting dough is easily over-proofed. On the other hand, if you were making a loaf without salt, you would watch it much more carefully.
Tuscan unsalted bread by itself does not thrill me either, but give me a slab of salted bacon to go with it (and a nice tuscan wine) in the shade of a Tuscan chestnut tree, I'm a happy camper. :)
You think Mini-O. But this blog has changed or taken a different direction, I never question whether to put or not salt in the bread. I was just curious why some people opted to do it in the later stages of the mixing, that's all. Anyway, some of you have actually answer my question and I'm very grateful for that.
Norman.
after the dough is mixed.
(Once upon a time...) I was mixing a white wheat dough. When I got to adding the salt after about an hour, I gave it one or two simple folds but suddenly had to stop. Don't remember why, but I thought it would dissolve and not be a problem. Returned hours later and dug my freshly washed hands into the dough. (wrote about it somewhere in the archives) There were hard hunks of dough with crystallized salt inside them. I cut up my hands trying to break them up and work in the salt. One of the few times I would advise throwing the dough away. I suppose I could have made a poolish adding more water and hoping for the best.
What seems to happen is that the salt attracts the water and then the salt encases itself with the dough as it pulls the water out of it forming a hard capsule. So salt doesn't blend very well if left to do it by itself. It has to be mixed in well whenever it is added.
Does that answer your Q ? (to get back on topic) or does it give birth rise salt to other thoughts?
Mini
Thank you Mini-O. I normally add the salt, sugar and yeast in the flour and I mix all those ingredients well and then I add the liquid. I'm in the pursuit or quest, to bake a good bread. I do good breads, very flavorful, lately I've been mixing, rye flour, with spelt and KA-AP. On the liquids, I used milk (whole milk), yogurt, dark molasses and honey. The bread comes out very good, nice color and the flavor is very good too. Some times I used a preferment and today I just combined and mixed all the ingredients together and retarded the fermentation on the fridge for 14 hrs. I used a digital scale to get right hydration percentage. My quest is to have a good score/slashing and to get good at knowing when the bread is proofed correctly for good oven spring and good ears in it. So far, I'm not there yet, but I'll keep trying, hopefully one day I'll get there. Also, I need to read more and learn from others. Here in this site, there amazing bakers and I want to become one of them. I need to get some books and get recipes. I like cook, I have worked in Italian restaurants and I grew up with my Grandma and my Mama watching them cooked all day and I used to help too. Anyway, I guess, I'm talking too much, hahaha.
Mini-O thank you for all your answers and advices!
Norman.
salt instead of the near standard 2% but I make sure it is a high quality tasty sea salt like my favorite - medium grain Pink Himilayan 2% salt is too salty but bread without salt is just plain old bread with no character or taste. Just go to Tuscany and you will quickly be baking your own bread with salt while there. Better to just bake Tuscan bread here and put salt in it. Wine is better and cheaper here too MiniO !
I certainly agree that adding some salt is critical for the flavor of bread.
Sure you can leave salt out of bread baking...just like you can leave salt out of cooking, right? ;)
I think most people would agree that cooked food without any salt, while edible, is not nearly as palatable as food that includes at least a little salt. I believe the same hold true for bread.
Hi folks
Apologies for taking the thread off-topic – I was concerned to try and address some of the points made in the article.
Art – Glad to hear you’ve been reinvigorated!
Nicodvb – When you say “Tuscan bread is really awful for me”, that’s fine. It’s obviously not awful for the Tuscans. But we can agree that it’s a matter of personal taste.
However, about bread without salt being “slack and sticky”, that’s not been my experience. Although rather agree with Mini Oven about what could happen if you over-proof a salt-less dough.
And I still maintain that it’s possible to train ones palate to accept bread without salt. Don’t suppose I could get one of you guys to test my theory out? Thought not! :-D
To get back on topic - I’ve tried adding salt at different times to a bread dough and it doesn’t seem to make any difference when it’s added.
Just a final note:
I think it's possible we obsess a little too much about bread and its constituent parts – and it can put beginners off!
I went to deliver a third and final session to a children’s centre this morning (it didn’t run since there was only one mother and child there - we’ll try again next week).
One of the support workers, a guy in his forties, I guess, said, “If it makes you feel any better, Paul, I’ve been making bread like mad since I saw you making it with the children. I’ve never tried before, because I always thought you had to be precise!”
So the message is, if we want to attract others to our hobby, keep it simple!
Regards to all! Paul
I'm very happy to hear that, Art - sounds great!
The key to all this is not to always follow received wisdoms - just because something has been done for years doesn't make it right. It's good to check things out for yourself sometimes.
Only today I realised I make bread without salt on a regular basis - none of my sweetened breads, of which there are many, contain any salt. Yet they all turn out fine. I treat salt as just another ingredient, which I include or leave out as the whim takes me. But for many years I haven't used salt in my fruit doughs, or any other sweetened dough - they just don't need it, IMO! The lack of salt in no way affects the dough.
Funnily enough, after all this talk about salt, I went to my weekly Family Learning class this morning, where I take all the ingredients - and forgot to take any! We were making plain and spicy fruit soda breads and I needed some salt for the plain loaves. I went to the school kitchen where they were busy preparing the lunch-time meal - but they didn't have any! Haven't stocked it for a while, now!
Luckily one of the teachers had some in her store cupboard, so I was OK.
Cheers, Paul
Ps. Just remembered, one of the students (it was the first session of a five week course) told us that she thought you had to have a bread machine to make bread. She didn't realise it could be made by hand and baked in an oven!