Home Bread Baking Supplies: Ingredients
When gathering your home bread baking supplies it is important to choose good quality ingredients. This page explains the main ingredients that are used to bake bread, as well as extra ingredients that can be added during the baking process to add tecture and flavour to your loaves!
Flour
A key ingredient of bread baking is quality strong bread flour. Flour made from wheat with a high protein content will ensure that the bread has an open texture and rises well. Inferior quality flour with a lower protein content can produce disappointing loaves with a poor crumb structure and crust and crumb colour.
Marriage’s strong white flours are ideal for white loaves, bloomers, rolls and a variety of World breads including French baguettes, Italian focaccia, bagels, chollas, pitta breads, Turkish flatbreads and chapatis. Marriage’s 100% Canadian Strong White flour is a superior bread baking flour, with an extremely high protein content.
Marriage’s strong stoneground wholemeal flours create great results for wholemeal loaves and rolls including variations such as honey and sunflower rolls and walnut and apricot bread. These flours contains 100% of the wheat grain including the bran and wheat germ and have been slowly ground in the traditional way, using French Burr stones. Finished loaves are brown and full of goodness and fibre. Marriage’s 100% Canadian Strong Wholemeal flour is a top quality bread flour, with an extremely high protein content.
Marriage’s Organic Country Fayre Malted Brown flour is ideal for textured loaves and rolls, such as malted wholemeal cobs, sticky malted fruit loaves and olive bread. The small kibbled malted wheat grains and added bran give a delicate and nutritious malty flavour.
Yeast
Yeast is an essential part of your bread baking suppplies. It is a raising agent that is added to bread to help it rise. Yeast is a living organism, which quickly multiplies in the correct heat and moisture. It works by converting the fermentable sugars within the dough into carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide forms air pockets, which makes the dough rise.
You can use fresh or dried yeast for home baking. Check the storage instructions to ensure that it does not become stale.
Fresh yeast is creamy beige in colour and has a distinctive sweet smell. Its moist putty-like texture is easy to crumble. Fresh yeast is available from high street and supermarket bakeries. It needs to be stored in the fridge but can also be frozen. Fresh yeast is not suitable for use in bread machines – only for hand baking.
Dried yeast is a dehydrated version of fresh yeast. It requires warm water to be added to it before use. Dried yeast keeps for longer than fresh yeast.
Fast action and easy blend dried yeasts are easier to use than regular dried yeast as they can be added straight into the flour. Fast action yeasts and some easy-blend yeasts contain a bread improver. This means that it is not necessary to do two kneading and rising processes, however do check the instructions. These are widely available from supermarkets and independent retailers.
Salt
Salt is the most important ingredient when making bread. It is used to control the yeast action and improve the flavour of bread. If you omit salt within bread making then the resulting dough will be a sticky, un-workable mess. As a rough guide, for a loaf made with 500g strong white flour, 5g salt would be required.
Water
Water is essential for bread making and creating good dough. Water is used to activate the yeast, which produces gas and enables the dough to rise. Different types of flours have different water absorption levels – brown and wholemeal flours can absorb more water than white flours. Always use tepid water in bread making.
Be careful when measuring out water, as too much liquid can make the dough sticky and difficult to work.
Milk and milk powder can be used mixed with water to produce soft-crusted breads.
Fat
This is not essential but most recipes call for the addition of fat to improve the taste and crust colour. Fat acts to improve the shelf life of bread, making it last for longer. Lard, margarine and white vegetable fat can all be used. Butter or a good quality olive oil could also be added to the loaf, however be careful when using olive oil as it has different functional properties. Ideally the fat used should be hard, as these have a high melting point.
Other ingredients
Sugar / Honey
Sugar or honey is an optional addition to bread. It is not essential, however is often added to tea breads and buns. It also serves a function of feeding the yeast.
Spices
Spices can be added to your loaves and rolls. If possible, invest in a grinder, as spices will taste better if they are freshly ground.
Nuts, seeds and dried fruits
Extra ingredients such as poppy seeds, sunflower seeds, raisins and sultanas can be added to the dough to provide extra texture and flavour.
