Bread Making
Senior 2 · Home Science
Bread Making
Lesson 3 of 4
22 min
Let's begin
A baker cannot rush bread. Each stage, from mixing to cooling, has a job, and skipping or hurrying one shows in the finished loaf: a heavy, flat bread usually means the kneading or proving was cut short. Small bakeries across Rwanda follow the same basic sequence every morning, whether they bake twenty loaves or two thousand.
In this lesson you will learn the stages of making a yeast bread, how to tell when each stage is complete, and how to find the cause of common faults.
Task: Uwase's loaf is small, flat and heavy. Her notes say: "water boiled then used at once; kneaded 3 minutes; proved 1 hour; baked 35 minutes at 200 °C". Identify the likely causes and the corrections.
Solution:
| Fault | Likely causes |
|---|---|
| Flat, heavy loaf | Yeast killed by hot water or old; too much salt; too little kneading; too short a rise |
| Loaf rose then collapsed; large holes; sour smell | Over-proved (left too long or in too hot a place) |
| Pale crust, doughy inside | Oven too cool or not preheated; baked too briefly |
| Burnt crust, raw centre | Oven too hot |
| Soggy base | Left to cool in the tin |
Warning
Safety when baking: use dry oven gloves; stand to one side and let the hot air escape when you open the oven door; in a gas oven, light the match before turning on the gas, and never lean over the burner; place hot tins on a heat-proof surface and warn others that they are hot. Slice bread on a board with a serrated (saw-edged) knife, using a gentle sawing motion with your fingers away from the blade.
Tip
Memory hook for the order: "Mix, Knead, Rise, Knock, Shape, Prove, Bake, Cool", or "My Kitten Really Knows She Purrs Before Cuddles".
Exam technique: in fault questions, link each fault to the stage that caused it and give the correction, as in the worked example.
Why is the dough covered while it rises?
Solution: To keep it warm and moist; without a cover the surface dries and forms a hard skin that stops it rising evenly.
What is the difference between the first rise and proving?
Solution: The first rise (bulk fermentation) happens after kneading, before shaping. Proving is the final rise, after the dough has been shaped and put in the tin, just before baking.
Give two tests that show a loaf is cooked.
Solution: Any two of: golden-brown crust; hollow sound when tapped underneath; centre temperature about 95 °C.
A loaf rose well, then sank in the oven and has large holes. Suggest the cause.
Solution: It was over-proved: the gluten stretched too far and could no longer hold the gas, so the structure collapsed.
Summary
Sources and credits
The step-by-step method, fault table, worked example and practice questions are written by Ganzaa.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
