This post was first published in 2022 and revised in 2025. It will have been republished in 2025.
2022 – Pan Replacement
Drive Shafts
My Zojirushi Virtuoso (model BB-PAC20) bread machine, purchased in 2020, stopped working on June 27, 2022. The pan would not seat on the drive connectors in the base of the machine. One of the 2 drive shafts was seized. The drive shafts are attached to the pan, a manufactured assembly of parts. There was no way for me:
to remove the shaft, the bearing and the seals, or
to have the pan serviced and the shaft and bearings serviced or replaced anywhere in North America, or indeed, the world.
A user can try to replace a bread machine pan, if the manufacturer is still supplying replacement pans to its sales and service agents. Zojirushi’s machines are not unique in this respect.
The pan was already loaded with unmixed ingredients. I emptied the pan into a mixing bowl. I mixed the ingredients, kneaded the dough, and baked the dough in the oven. I set the oven to 350 ℉. I guessed time, and kept baking until the loaf was done. It had not risen properly, but it was edible.
Replacing the Pan
Zojirushi sells its branded bread machines through select retailers. On Vancouver Island, the retail distributor was Healthy Kitchens, an e-commerce store in or near Duncan BC, the successor of a retail store in Cowichan Bay or in Duncan – not far from Victoria. In 2022, the online store advertised the newer Zojirushi Virtuoso Plus, model BB-PDC20, and a replacement pan for the BB-PDC20. It did not list a replacement pan for a BB-PAC20 as available. In 2022 Zojirushi’s Canadian service/parts agency, Beaver Creek Electronics, in Richmond Hill, Ontario (in the Greater Toronto area) was selling replacement parts online and arranging delivery. It had:
8-BBP-P080 pan assemblies for the BB-PAC20 Virtuoso,
BX167810A-00 pan assemblies for the BB-PDC20 Virtuoso Plus (“V+), and
kneading blades (Zojirushi’s term for the paddles or dough hooks in the pans) for both the BB-PAC20 Virtuoso and the BB-PDC20 V+.
Both pans are the large horizontal pans that will hold and bake a 2 pound loaf. The pans look the same but there was nothing from Zojirushi to say that the BX167810A-00 pan assembly was a replacement part for the older Virtuoso. I ordered the 8-BBP-P080 pan assembly (for the BB-PAC20) from Beaver Creek in Richmond Hill. It arrived July 5, 2022. I did not order new kneading blades at that time.
It probably would have been better to order a BX167810A-00 (V+) pan assembly, and a set of kneading blades manufactured as replacement blades for a BB-PDC20 V+. I discovered in 2025 that the pan assembly for the V+ fits in a Virtuoso. The main difference between the pan assemblies was how the drive shafts fit the kneading blades. Kneading blades have a limited service life, and should be replaced after 100 weeks of service of 1.5 to 2 loaves a week.
2025 – kneading blade failure
One of the my original Virtuoso blades failed in July 2025. The result and sign of the failure was that there was some dry flour in a pocket in the loaf at one end, when the machine stopped after the loaf had been baked. The machine had run. The machine had mixed most of the ingredients, kneaded dough and baked the loaf. The drive shaft had not moved the blade on the drive shaft at the end of loaf where I found the flour.
Upon a very close inspection, the flat area of the socket of one of the blades had disappeared, leaving a rounded socket that did not fit the drive shaft and did not rotate with the drive shaft. I took this picture. The blade at the top of the image is worn but still only points away from the flat portion of the drive shaft. The blade at the bottom of the image, completely worn, can be rotated around the shaft.
Another picture of my old blades . The blade that still works is at the top. There is still material visible in the socket to form a functional flat section. of the shaft. There is nothing left of the flat section of the socket of blade at the bottom:
The flat section of the socket of the blade is only about 3 mm. long. It does not run the full height of the socket.
No Blades
By 2025, there were no replacement blades for the Virtuoso BB-PAC20 available from any vendor in Canada or the USA. True replacement blades would be made of the same metal as original manufacturer’s blades, with the manufacturer’s no-stick coating.
Compatible Blades
There was a listing in the Amazon.ca market for “LEDBarz 8-BBP-P070 Bread Machine Kneading Paddle(2Pcs) Compatible with Zojirushi Bread Machine BB-PAC20”. The listing said “It is recommended to apply some cooking oil to the kneading paddle before use to enhance your baking experience, this is a top of the range replacement part that is compatible with Zojirushi bread machines such as the BB-PAC20 model”. The vendor was a “brand” which offer several other small parts for various device – evidently all shipped from China. It had negative or lukewarm reviews:
The new paddles for my Zojirushi fit but they do not have a non stick coating so consequently when removing the bread from the pan, big chunks of bread stay behind, stuck to the paddles. Very disappointing.
xxxx
They’re lacking a non-stick coating of any kind and are just highly polished instead, which means there’s a tendency for them to take divots out of the bread as it bakes very firmly onto them. But even the original paddles sometimes did that, so they’re a perfectly adequate substitute.
The LEDBarz blades fit on the drive shafts. They
are made of different material that the original authentic blades. (A blade weighs about 30 grams);
lack any no-stick coating.
The blades fit. The manufacturer’s advice to coat the blades with cooking oil was dubious – a few drops of oil would be absorbed like oil added as as ingredient, as the machine mixed and kneaded. I tested whether the blades, coated, would work when used when dough is not mixed in the pan and is placed in the pan to rise and bake. Under those conditions, the dough baked onto the blades, which tore holes in the loaf.
I tried using the machine simply as a proofing box and oven would work, if the shafts were coated with cooking oil. The dough must have absorbed the oil on the shafts as the dough rose. Some crumb baked onto the shafts, leaving the shafts coated in crumb and leaving small conical holes. Much better, but I was using time mixing and kneading, and not getting those functions from my Virtuoso machine.
I tried to “season” the blades by heading them, coating them with flax oil and baking the oil. This is the way to season cast iron griddles and frying pans and carbon steel woks. The oil baked onto the blades, but this did not alleviate the adhesion of dough, and the result that bread baked onto these blades.
I bought a V+ pan assembly and a set of V+ kneading blades. Not cheap, but this worked to mix, knead, rises and bake and to get loaves out of the pan without leaving those divots on the blades.
2022-25, Bread Machine
Loading the Bread Machine
The Zojirushi machines take fluids first, at the bottom of the pan. The “Operating Instruction & Recipes” booklet by Zojirushi USA, with the machine when I received it says: “Precisely measure the ingredients and add them to the baking pan in the following order … :
Water (liquid)
Flour – make a mound of flour
Sugar, dry milk, salt and butter
Make a depression in the middle of the flour and place the yeast”
The booklet did not say or suggest that this order saved the kneading blades or any component from any risk of damage.
I routinely loaded ingredients that dissolve or suspend in water in the liquid before the flour: salt, sugar, honey, molasses, maple syrup, milk, milk powder and butter.
I began to use table salt instead of kosher salt, which I used before 2022. As I have been measuring by weight, this has not made a difference in results. Kosher salt has larger crystals and can be used to replace table salt when measured by weight. Both kinds of crystals are small enough that they dissolve in water during the rest and mix/knead phases in a bread machine.
Bread machine manuals warn against using the time feature for a delayed-start timer with milk products, because of the risk of spoilage. I rarely set the timer on my bread machine.
Recipes
I stopped trying to put recipes online. I put my recipes into spread sheets that showed ingredients by weight and volume, and allowed for calculation of Bakers’ ratio, sodium content, and other details. This has allowed me to work on how much salt to use to get acceptable gluten development, and how much yeast and water are necessary to get a dough that flows, rise and springs without ballooning, collapsing or developing a dimpled or cratered top crust.
Vital Wheat Gluten
Before the pandemic, it was possible to buy vital wheat gluten (“VWG”) in grocery stores in Victoria. Some stores stocked a brand milled by Millstream Natural Foods. Others stocked Bob’s Red Mill brand Vital Wheat Gluten. I was not able to find Millstream in retail stores or online. That supplier may have ceased offering it. Bob’s stopped offering the product under that name and ny 2022 offered “Gluten Flour” which is its new name for VWG. For a few months neither version of the product was in stores in Victoria. VWG is still being milled, and marketed the Market Stores in Victoria as of 2025, but not Loblaws, Save-On, Walmart or any other grocery store chain. People who have bread machines or who bake certain recipes at home may need it. But, there is a movement against gluten which may be making decision makers nervous that stocking the product harms the brand reputation of the company
Proofing Box Feature
The Zojirushi Virtuoso and V+ models uses the heating element to bake the ingredients, and also to:
warm the cold ingredients in a period of “rest” before the machine mixes and kneads the dough, and
raise the temperature in the pan to 91-95 °F (33-35 ºC) in the “rise” periods before baking when the yeast is fermenting the dough producing gas that inflated the dough.
This effect can be compared to using a proofing box. a device to keep dough warmer than room temperature (during primary fermentation or proofing)
None of the bread machines on the market surveyed by Beth Hensperger in her Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (2000) were said to have worked that way. The machines on the market at that time had timers setting the “rest” times. The dough was warm and moist after kneading (the action of kneading makes dough warm). The machine kept the heat and humidity by shelter inside the pan in the machine under a lid. The possibility of heating the unmixed ingredients and dough was not mentioned in that book. The development of a proofing box function involved different control chips and switches. It is a feature on the Zojirushi Virtuoso, the V+, the Zojirushi Supreme and some other Zojirushi machines. I think it was a feature on my Panasonic, although it was/is not discussed in the Panasonic material. I don’t know if a heated “rest” or “rise” phase has become common or standard in the industry or the market. I haven’t researched this.
Timed warm fermentation is a feature when that aids the machine to produce a predictable loaf in the set time. Artisan bakers extend and delay fermentation by mixing pre-ferments, and by refrigerating pre-ferments and doughs.
Oven Baking
Effort and Costs
I had not hand mixed and kneaded, used my stand mixer or made no-knead bread 0ften since I began to make bread in a bread machine. The bread machine makes good sandwich bread, if I get the flour, water, salt and yeast right. The bread machine and pan do not require the cleaning that mixing bowls and tools require.
I had, at one time, a stand mixer with a 7 quart bowl. I did not use it much and sold or donated it a few years ago. A stand mixer is a specialty appliance. Its main job is mixing and kneading bread dough.
I have a Bosch Compact stand mixer. Like other Bosch mixers, it is a multi-function device that powers a food processor, a blender and other powered accessories. It is smaller than most other stand mixers made for American consumers. It has a 4 quart bowl, big enough to mix and knead dough with 8 cups of flour – enough for two 9 inch x 5 inch loaves baked in oven baking pans. The motor is rated at 400 watts. Bosch’s larger (6.5 quart bowl, 18 cups flour capability) Universal stand mixer has been down graded by American Underwriters Laboratory from 800 watts to 500 watts.
A stand mixer reduces some of the labor of mixing and kneading, and the effort of cleaning up bowls, utensils and working space, but not as much labor as bread machine.
Oven baking
The first hot spell in 2022 ended the day the bread machine broke, but it was followed by other hot days. I only tried a few oven loaves on cool days. I found the dough rose slowly, and did not rise after I had put dough in bread pans for secondary proofing (final fermentation). I wondered about possible causes:
my low yeast/low salt approach,
my kitchen was to cool those days,
I was not giving the dough time, and/or
I handled the dough roughly.
There were several more hot days in August and early September 2025. I avoided oven baking. I thought I would experiment in the fall and winter. But I did not follow up until 2025. In 2025 I grew a mother starter (a culture of yeast and bacteria grown without using modern industrially grown baker’s yeast) and made some dough with sponges and starters made from the mother starter.
Sodium
Less is better
Baked bread, sold in stores and bakeries, is high in sodium due to the amount of salt used in baking, and sodium in some other baking ingredients including baking soda, baking powder, milk and powdered milk. Home baked bread is high in sodium due to the amount of salt in most recipes in books or on line. Bread machine bread, made with standard recipes, is high in sodium. For instance, a 1.5 lb. medium bread machine recipe for lean white (“French”) bread or for white sandwich bread may specify 1.5 tsp. salt and 2 tsp. instant yeast (the yeast may be similar to 2.75 tsp of active dry yeast). Both require 417 g. bread flour (3 cups). The water requirements will be different, but in a range from 237 g. (1 cup) to 1.5 cups.
Sodium is a micronutrient, but a healthy adult only needs 500 mg. daily.
1.5 tsp of salt is 8.5 g. This amount will contribute 3,360 mg. of sodium to a loaf. 1 moderately thick slice from that loaf will contain about 300 mg of sodium. Assuming 16 slices per loaf and 2 slices per sandwich, a sandwich will contain 400 mg. of sodium. While that sounds ok, 4 sandwiches in a day means 1600 mg. before counting any sodium from any other food. This makes it hard to restrict sodium consumption to the daily limits advised by agencies or or follow a DASH diet with sodium limitation. Agencies and recommendations:
the USDA – 2,300 mg.,
the WHO – 1,500 mg..
A 1.5 lb. medium bread machine recipe
for a multigrain loaf with bread flour and whole wheat flour may also specify 1.5 tsp salt but the yeast may be higher than 2 tsp. instant yeast. The water and water based fluid will be higher.
for a pure whole wheat loaf may specify 1.5 tsp. salt and 3 tsp. (1 Tbsp.) instant yeast. It may specify more than 3 cups of flour and 1.5 cups of water.
Each recipe may require or suggest a different program, and the mixing/kneading programs vary between machine brands and models. The set time for mixing/kneading, primary fermentation, bench rise and baking vary.
I have made bread with 50%, 33% and 25% of the salt in a standard recipe bread a few changes in crumb and the taste of the bread.
There are a few recipes for no-salt bread and no-salt bread machine bread online and in specialized recipe books.
I tried recipes from the Zojirushi Virtuoso Operating Instruction & Recipes booklet:
a medium bread machine loaf that uses equal portions of whole wheat flour and bread flour, which I adjusted to less than 1¼ tsp. active dry yeast for a 2 lb. large loaf, scaled down to a medium loaf1converted to instant yeast, and metric weight 3 g.;
a medium bread machine loaf that uses bread flour zero salt, and 1 Tbsp. of vinegar, and 2.16 g. (75 tsp.) instant yeast.
These low salt and zero-salt loaves worked. The results contradict the rule of thumb I have been following for reducing salt and yeast, and started a process of developing numbers for workable weights of yeast and salt for Virtuoso machines.
Instant yeast
I used SAF Red instant (dry)yeast until I had used up a 454 g. (1 lb.) bag in 2021. I had tried to weigh and average 1 tsp. samples. I thought 1 tsp. SAF Red instant yeast weighed 2.8 g., but sources said the standard for instant yeast was 3.12 or 3.15 g. I purchased a small bag of instant yeast (Red Barn stores brand) locally. It appeared to weigh 3.2 g. per tsp. I ordered another bag of SAF Red and tried to verify what 1 tsp. weighed to check on my recipes.
King Arthur or its shipping contractor stopped shipping to Canada in 2023, and Red Barn stopped packaging and selling instant yeast. I found that Fleischmann’s make a product called IDY, an instant dry yeast, in 454 gram (1 lb.) bulk foil bags, available locally in Victoria. It works fine. In retail grocery stores in 2025, yeast, including yeast by Fleischmann’s is still marketed in glass bottles or very small (less than 1 Tablespoon) foil packets, labelled as active dry yeast, fast rise yeast, or bread machine yeast. Such is the belief of yeast growers and marketers in the value of names to sell things.
Reduction formula
A rule suggested by Beth Hensperger in the Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (“BLBMC”), is to reduce salt and yeast proportionately by weight is a rule of thumb. It works with wheat flour (bread flour and whole wheat flour) loave). There must be yeast or a leavening agent to make a dough that rises and can be baked into leavened bread. It is a good idea to have some salt. Salt affects hydration and gluten formation (a reaction between two proteins found in wheat flour). The amount of salt in most recipes is higher than what is necessary for gluten formation.
Following the BLBMC rule starts to produce loaves that do not flow and rise enough – the dough is not fermenting enough or is losing gas. I have reconsidered my approach to how much yeast and water to use to balance medium loaves.
I wrote and published this post in 2020 within a few months after I started using a Zojirushi Virtuoso bread machine. I made changes and reorganized. I made major changes and republished in 2025.
Zojirushi Virtuoso
The firm has a brief Wikipedia entry, which reports:
Zōjirushi Mahōbin Kabushiki-gaisha) is a Japanese multinational manufacturer and marketer of vacuum flasks, beverage dispensers, thermos-style lunch jars, and consumer electronics including rice cookers, electric water boilers, hot plates, bread machines, electric kettles, and hot water dispensers.
There are subsidiary or related companies in the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand and the USA. Zojirushi has Australian, Middle Eastern and European distributors. The global web page only list the USA company in the North America section. The two main Zojirushi web sites:
the global (international) web page. It displays in the English language. The global page does not mention bread machines.
the web page Zojirushi.com. The domain is controlled by the USA company, which publishes the .com page. This page is a portal to the USA web store. These pages and the web store discuss Zojirushi bread machines.
The relative authority and roles of the regions and regional companies are not stated. Zojirushi web pages do not say where Zojirushi products are manufactured. One third party site says, as to bread machines:
The company has several production sites, including its main factory in Osaka, Japan, where it produces a significant portion of its bread makers. Zojirushi also has partnerships with contract manufacturers in countries such as China and Thailand, where some of its products are assembled and tested.
TableAndSpoon, viewed July 21, 2025
Another third party site says:
Zojirushi is a Japanese company that produces a wide range of kitchen appliances, including bread machines. Zojirushi bread machines are designed and engineered in Japan, and the company’s manufacturing facilities are located in Japan, China, and Thailand.
The exact location of production may vary depending on the specific model and the year it was manufactured. …
The model BB-PAC20 was apparently the original Virtuoso.
The Bread Machine Diva (see links below) said in a post on her web page/blog “I bought [a BB-PAC20 Virtuoso bread machine] in 2013 and it’s still going strong. Yes, it’s more than 10 years old! I love love this bread machine! I make bread in it all the time and this machine has lasted longer than any bread machine I’ve ever owned.” The post has had undated changes and updates. She said she had replaced the kneading blades a few times which qualifies her statement about durability.
Reviews online that described and illustrated the Virtuoso BB-PAC20:
Breadmakers.com. As of 2025 site had been updated to discuss the V+.
the Bread Machine Diva site has material on Zojirushi’s BB-PAC20 Virtuoso, BB-PDC20 Virtuoso Plus (“V+”), and BB-CEC20 Supreme (“Supreme”), as well as recipes.
The Bread Machine Diva site had resources, as of 2025, that may assist users of many machines – e.g. a page of links to manufacturer service sites and manuals.
By 2019, Zojirushi was marketing the BB-PDC20 Virtuoso Plus (“V+”, and had stopped producing the Virtuoso.
The V+ is structurally and functionally similar to the Virtuoso. There were changes to the keypad and the courses (Zojirushi calls the programs that control the machine in kneading and baking a specific type of loaf”courses”. Courses are options turned on by touching buttons on the key pad. Other manufacturers have other names for courses, programs, controls and features.):
These Zojirushi bread machines are almost exactly the same when it comes to appearance and features. …
The biggest differences are the larger LCD and expanded course list of the Zojirushi BB-PDC20: it has 15 options compared to the 10 courses of the BB-PAC20. Another small difference is the control panel buttons that has white text on a black background.
Breadmakers.com, “Zojirushi BB-PDC20 Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Review”
In 2022 Z0jirushi’s dealers and service agencies sold replacement pans and kneading blades for the Virtuoso for a few years. By 2025,it had discontinued those parts. In 2025, the USA web store and Amazon were offering to sell a BB-PDC20BA, (the Bread Machine Diva says the BA suffix is a code for the color scheme), with replacement parts for the BB-PDC20.
I found a refurbished Virtuoso BB-PAC20 in an online store in early 2020.
Virtuoso/V+ Basics
Dimensions
The outside dimensions (inches|cm) and weight of the Virtuoso, and the V+:
Model
End to end
Front to back
Height
Weight lb.|kg
Virtuoso
18|45.5
10.5|26.5
13|32.5
22.5|10.2
V+
18|45.5
10.5|26.5
12⅞|32.5
24|10.5
The body is metal. The outer surface of the lid is plastic. The lid has a metal inner shell that aligns to the top of pan. The lid is substantial, with a long hinge with stops that holds the lid just past vertical when raised.
The viewing window in the lid collects a little condensation during the rest period before the mix/knead phase and in the early minutes of that phase, but clears up. It lets me observe the knead and see the dough. Raising the lid turns off the motor, pausing the course until the lid is lowered into place.
These machine have a delay timer, as most bread machines do, that can be programmed to finish (and start) at a time up to 13 hours after loading and starting the machine. The timer is integrated with a clock, and can be set to time when the bread can be taken out of the machine.
Mixing Pan
The Virtuoso and the V+ have pan assemblies that can be removed from the machine to load ingredient, remove the dough or loaf, and for cleaning. The assemblies include the pans, handles, a base fitting, drive shafts, bearings and other parts. Pan assemblies are available as repair parts to the general public. I do not know if Zojirushi sells individual components of the pan assembly to service agencies.
There are very few differences between the pan assemblies of the two model. The mixing/baking pans of the Virtuoso and the V+ are identical in size.
In my experience, a V+ pan assembly fits a Virtuoso BB-PAC20 and can be used a replacement for a Virtuoso pan assembly – if a user uses mixing blades for the V+!
The pans are horizontal, and large in bread machine terminology – it will mix and bake a 2 lb. loaf. The inside measurements of the pan are 22 cm (9 inches) long by 13 cm (5 inches) wide. This pan is as long as a large (2 lb.) baking pan for loaves baked in an oven; and slightly wider. The pan is 13 cm (5 inches) high, and has clearance under the lid and lid element – i.e. capacity to bake a large (2 lb.) loaf. The pan has drive shafts for two “kneading blades” (i.e. dough hooks/paddles). The shafts pass through sealed assemblies in bottom of the pan, and have “wing nut” (also called in the literature about the V+ “coupling wing nuts” ) that fits into openings in the machines’ drive system.
A bread machine pan is both a mixing bowl and a baking pan. A metal baking pan can be oiled when dough is place in a pan to rise and bake. The bowl of an electric mixer must adhere to the dough to mix and knead, and then allow a loaf to rise and slide out after baking.
The interiors of the pans on both models have a no-stick coating that functions well and seems durable. The pan coating releases the loaf easily at the end of the bake cycle; the paddles stay on the shafts in the pan.
There is a metal rectangle riveted to the base of the pan that fits into the “baking pan receptacle” a rectangle 6¼ inches (15.5 cm.) inside the machine the base of the pan. There are fittings at the long ends of the rectangles. The pan is pushed into the base to lock the pan in, and tilted slightly to unlock. Locking the pan puts the wing nuts on the drive shafts into the drive system. Seating the pan in the base requires light pressure.
The mixing and kneading are performed by two kneading blades driven by a drive train powered by a 100 watt electric motor in the Virtuoso and the V+. This is not as powerful as the motors on stand mixers marketed to home bakers.
Zojirushi uses the motor for long periods of mixing/kneading in programming the “courses” in the control set. This ensures that the dough is fully mixed and hydrated. Zojirushi gives the dough time to ferment in the Rise phases of its courses.
Drive Shafts
Two drive shafts, mechanically attached, are part of the pan assembly on both machines. The shafts are steel and not treated with no-stick coating. The kneading blades fit on the drive shafts; each shafts fit into a socket at one of each kneading blade. (Coupling) wing nuts mechanically fixed to the ends of the drive shafts below (outside) the pan, fit into openings attached to in the drive system. The blades are rotated in jumps when drive motor is running.
Here is a 2025 picture of the inside of my Virtuoso BB-PAC20 pan assembly showing the bottom of the pan, with drive shafts, without kneading blades. The inside of a V+ pan, visually, would appear to be identical:
In both models:
Shafts project into the inside of the pan assembly though holes located in small depressions in the base of the pans.
A shaft, measured from the bottom of a depression, is about 250 mm high.
A drive shaft is mainly round, 8 mm in diameter.
There are flat sections at the top of each shaft. The bottom of the blade is held off the base of the pan by the way the blade and the shaft connect, which creates a gap.
The gap is about the width of a gift card, about .75 to .80 mm over the main bottom area of the pan – (larger in the depression at the base of a drive shaft).
The width of a gift card, and kneading blade, are shown in this photo. The kneading blade is laid flat on the table top. The width of the gift card was determined with a digital caliper:
Another way to get a look at an image of a drive shaft in a pan assembly: in the support pages at Zojirushi.com (the USA site), find a manual for the V+. You may have to download the manual as a pdf file; look at the section “Attach the Kneading Blades to the Rotating Shafts in the Baking Pan” (p. 14 for the V+).
There is a tiny change in the dimensions of the drive shafts between the models.
The shafts are round except for an area at the top of the shaft which has a flat section. There is flat section at very top of the shaft. There is a 2nd flat area immediately next to the top of the shaft – i.e. a deeper area or notch in the shaft. The differences are in the flat sections:
Dimension
Virtuoso
Virtuoso Plus
Top section
2.05 mm
1.99 mm
Notch section
2.95 mm
5.95 mm
The differences are matched by changes in the sockets of the mixing blades that fit over the drive shafts. The kneading blades for the V+ are different than the blades for the Virtuoso.
Kneading Blades
A kneading blade was shown in an image above. The blades appear to be cast from aluminum. The blades have no-stick coating. The weights of my two old blades as of July 2025 and new blades for the V+:
Worn out blade – 17.9 grams;
Worn but working blade – 18. 1 grams;
New V+ blade – 18.0 to 18.12 grams.
A blade for either machine has a cylindrical socket that fits around a drive shaft. The height of the socket is just a tad less than 25 mm. high. Each is 60 mm. long, measuring from end to end including the socket. The height of the blade portion is 30 mm.
The inside of the socket is round for a distance from the bottom (this is hard to measure). The measurement for the Virtuoso is about 18.7 mm. For the V+ it is about 15.7 mm. There is a short round section at the top of the socket for about 2.0 or 2.1 mm on the blades for both model. The inside diameter of the socket, in the round section, is 8.5 mm.
The flat areas of the sockets near the top of the blade corresponding to the flat area in notches in the drive shafts. The flat surfaces are aligned with each other when the blade is in position on the shaft. This is how force is transmitted to the blade when the drive system is active (when the machine is mixing/kneading or “knocking down” during the a rise phase). The blade cannot engage the shaft unless the blade is oriented correctly. The bottom of the flat area of the socket hits the bottom of the flat area of the notch area of shaft, which stops the blade from dropping along the shaft and hitting the bottom of the pan – it creates small gap. The top of the flat area catches the top of the notch in the shaft unless the blade is aligned. This keep the blades from lifting, sliding or falling off the shafts except when in alignment.
The V+ blades do not drop to the bottom of the shaft of the older Virtuoso. Virtuoso blades and the “compatibles” found in online stores and markets will drop to0 far down the shafts of a V+ pan.
When a blade in working condition is fitted to a drive shaft, the top of the socket will align a fraction of a millimeter below the top of the shaft; the bottom of the socket and the bottom of the blade are held off the bottom of the pan. When the flat area of the socket is worn out, the blade does not engage the drive shaft. This has consequences:
The blade contacts the base of the pan – it rest on the bottom of the pan;
The drive shaft will spin in the socket without moving the blade.
Before a blade is worn out, when a blade is worn enough it may contact the pan.
The manual recommends wet ingredients be loaded first. This machine uses the usual way of keeping yeast away from the water: the user puts yeast in last, after the flour. When the machine is loaded, both blades are in the water or wet ingredients. Both blades mix the dough. The Operating Instruction & Recipe Book (manual) included a number of recipes. The manual could be viewed at the manufacturer’s USA web site as a pdf before it was manual was removed. Most of the recipes are for large (2 lb.) loaves.
The outside of the shaft is a quarter millimeter from the inside of the socket. Water, including water with dissolved and suspended solids, can penetrate this space, and some dough normally gets in.
In my experience:
Baked material does not adhere to the blades if the blades are in good condition;
Tiny amounts of crumb (baked material) stick to the upper tips of the drive shafts;
A minute amount of dough gets into the sockets and bakes into a layer of crumb that makes the blades stick to the drive shafts
The blades may trap a little crust when the loaf is removed from the pan. When some crust is trapped, sometimes some crumb adheres to the trapped crust and may be torn out of the loaf. This depends of the final angle of the blades and the type of bread. A lean bread with a strong crust and crumb can tear..
The pan releases the loaf; the blades say with the pan. The blades may have a small amount of crumb or crust adhering. I waiting for the pan to cool and put water in the pan to a depth that covers the blades and shafts. After a short soak I can twist the blades and release them off the shafts (manually).
This photo shows the Virtuoso BB-PAC20 pan with blades. One blade is worn but still working; one is completely worn out:
The worn out blade rotates freely on the shaft and rests on the bottom of the pan.
Mixing and kneading are a single phase. The dough ball will not fill the pan until the dough ferments (rises), or the loaf springs during the first few minutes after the baking phases begins. During kneading, the dough should form a single ball that moves around the bottom of the pan. A wet dough may form two balls. Generally, the dough flows together and forms a loaf when the dough has fermented and sprung.
In some circumstances one of the blades can be lifted out of attachment to the drive shaft When this happens, the dough ball may stay at one end of the pan. The dough may flow enough fill the pan and bake into a normally shapes loaf when there is enough dough in the pan. Some times, one end of the loaf may be bigger and rise higher, or the loaf may show other signs of the way it rose and and sprung in the pan.
Heating
The heating elements of both models have the same energy settings. The main 600 watt heating element is under the pan, laid out in rectangle inside the space where the pan rests while the machine operates. There is a second 40 watt element in the lid. It is not visible when the lid is raised. It is inside the lid around the viewing window .
The main heating element is on, heating the space around the pan to 248-302 F (120-150 C) for baking the loaf in these courses:
Regular (& Quick) Basic,
Regular (& Quick) Whole Wheat,
Gluten-Free,
Cake
Home-made
Jam (heat).
The heat is on at a low temperature to heat the ingredients in the initial “rest” phase, which occurs in most courses. The heat is on at 91-95 F (33-35 C) during up to 3 Rise phases in these courses:
Regular (& Quick) Basic,
Regular (& Quick) Whole Wheat,
Regular (& Quick) Dough,
Gluten-Free,
Sourdough starter,
Home-made.
The Virtuoso and V+ turn the heating element on for short intervals during the rise phases to raise the temperature in the mixing/baking pan to enhance or speed up fermentation.
The control panel has a control button to set a crust setting of light, medium or dark. This function is active only in Regular Basic (V+ White), Quick Basic, (V+ Rapid White) gluten free and cake courses (programs).
Courses
Phases
The wheat flour baking courses were called Regular Basic, Quick Basic, Regular Wheat and Quick Wheat in the Virtuoso. The names are changed in the V+, but the times for the phases of the course are the same:
Virtu0so
Regular Basic
Quick Basic
Regular Wheat
Quick Wheat
V+
White
Rapid White
Whole Wheat
Rapid Wheat
A baking course has 4 phases.
Name
Action and purpose
Rest
The ingredients are heated a little above the ambient temperature around the machine
Mix/Knead
1. (a) Mix the ingredients, dissolve soluble solids (e.g. salt, sugar, milk powder, butter), dilute or disperse honey or sweet syrup or 1. 1. (b) Begin to hydrate the flour; /and 2. Hydrate the flour further and/or work the proteins in the flour into gluten.
Rise(s)
Fermentation. The element(s) warms the space around the pan to 91-95 ℉ (33-35 ℃) The motor is deployed to move the blades for knockdowns at the beginning of Rise 2 and Rise 3. A program with three Rise phases has sequence of rise-knockdown-rise-knockdown-rise.
Bake
The element(s) heats the space around the pan to 248-302 ℉ (120-150 ℃) to bake the loaf.
The amount of time devoted to each phase varies, but is fixed for each of the programmed courses. There is no setting to change any phase of any course for loaf size. The mix/knead phases are longer than in many other machines but not as long as in some Panasonic models.
Regular and Quick
The Virtuoso BB-PAC20 Zojirushi “Quick” courses were variations of the Regular Basic, Bake Whole Wheat and Dough courses. The differences between Regular and Quick courses were the amounts of yeast, and timing. The V+ does not have “Quick” courses but has “Fast Rise” White and Wheat courses. When the Bread Machine Diva wrote about the V+in 2021, she complained that the V+ lacked the “Quick Dough” course of the Virtuoso, which she found useful in using the Virtuoso to mix/knead and proof dough that would be hand shaped and baked in an oven – e.g. dinner rolls
Zojirushi said in the Virtuoso BB-PAC20 manual that it has tested the its programs with Fleishmann Yeast products – active dry yeast for the Regular Basic, Bake (Whole) Wheat and Dough programs, and “Fast-Rise” dry yeast for the Quick versions. This was standard for Zojirushi’s bread machines before the V+. When the V+ was released, Zojirushi’s recipes ceased to refer to active dry yeast and began to refer to instant yeast. A Virtuoso BB-PAC20 user can use instant yeast for a “Regular” course, if the amount is converted.
The brand of yeast is not important. There are no functional differences between instant yeast and Fast or Quick rise yeast products; the yeast strains are equivalent and the amounts and types of coating are the same. The Bread Machine Diva has done an article on that subject. I agree.
The times (in minutes) for these phases :
Course (Program)
Rest
Mix/Knead
Rise 1
Rise 2
Rise 3
Bake
Regular Basic
31
19
35
20
40
60
Quick Basic
18
22
20
35
0
50
R. Bake Wheat
31-41
22
27-37
30
20-30
60-70
Quick Wheat
15
27
13
30
0
60
R. Dough
23
20
45
22
0
x
Quick Dough
10
20
10
10
0
x
The Virtuoso Quick courses use more yeast with same amounts of flour, water, salt, and other ingredients. I compared manufacturer’s recipes for medium (1.5 lb.) loaves, from the manual. In a Virtuoso:
White bread is prepared on the Regular Basic and Quick Basic courses.
100% whole wheat bread is prepared on the Wheat Basic and Wheat Quick courses.
I converted Active dry yeast to Instant yeast to compare yeast quantities more clearly for the Virtuoso.
Course
Regular
Regular
Quick
Yeast (dry)
Active
Instant
Instant
Salt
Basic White Bread
1½ tsp.
4.2 g. (1½ tsp.)
2.8 g.
4.5 g.
100% Whole Wheat
1 tsp.
4.2 g. (1½ tsp.)
2.8 g.
4.5 g.
Dough, Starter, Other
The Virtuoso uses mix/knead and rise phases in the regular and quick (dough courses. These courses do not proceed to the bake phase; the user should turn the dough out immediately at the end of the course, and shape and bake the dough in an oven. The V+ has a Dough course.
The Sourdough starter courses in both machine have a short Mix phase and a single 120 minute Rise (not 3 Rises). The Recipe booklet and Book of the respective machines have recipes to make a starter from flour and water and (commercial baker’s) yeast which can then be used to bake bread later
The machines, in this course, can mix a starter or a pre-ferment (e.g. levain, sponge, poolish, biga). The fermentation time can be extended by leaving the pre-ferment in the pan longer. It could be a useful feature for users who want to use a bread machine instead of using other methods of growing and feeding “mother” starters or making pre-ferments.
These machines have:
a cake course for cake mixes, soda bread, corn bread and other chemically leavened (baking powder and/or baking soda) mixes;
a gluten-free bake course for gluten-free breads, which has a 17 minute knead phase, and a 35 minute three step rise phase;
a Jam course which heats and cooks the ingredients, then mixes them.
Home Made
The Virtuoso and V+ provide for saving 3 “Home made” courses (custom programs) in which a user may set the time for the initial rest, mix/knead, rise (3x), and bake phases in a range. Temperatures for the rise phases and bake phase are preset.
Raisins, Fruits, Seeds
A baking course by default, sounds a beep to prompt the user to add raisins or other ingredients late in the kneading phase. The prompt can be turned off when the machine is set. This feature was no changed in the V+/
Not included in the Virtuoso..
The Virtuoso did not have
a French or European bread course,
an explicitly named multigrain course, course or
a No Salt course
but can manage these breads.
Rye bread
There is no rye course. Zojirushi had/has recipes in the (Whole) Wheat course sections for bread with a little rye flour in its recipe books:
for the Virtuoso, a printed “Operating Instructions and Recipes” booklet; in the “Wheat” (i.e. Whole Wheat) course section. I still have my copy – the booklet was removed from the support material available to consumers and the public at Zojirushi.com;
the Z+”Recipe Book”, a V+ support document at Zojirushi.com, still available in 2025.
One was “light rye” requiring over 4 cups of bread flour and ⅔ cup of rye flour to make a large (2lb.) loaf in the Virtuoso publication, changed to about 3 cups of bread flour, ½ whole wheat flour and 1 cup of rye flour for the V+. Both publications have recipes for a “pumpernickel” loaf with wheat flour, cocoa powder and instant coffee, and less than a cup of rye flour.
The Virtuoso (and the V+) do not handle rye flour beyond a very small amount. The machine does sandwich bread made from wheat flours, with some options.
Differences
+/-
The V+ has all the courses the Virtuoso had including Sourdough starter, Cake, Gluten Free, Jam, but it lacks a Quick/Rapid Dough course.
European Bread
The V+ has a European bread course, which seems to be intended for baking lean crusty bread. On of the recipes in V+ recipe book is identical to the recipe in the Virtuoso BB-PAC20 “Instruction & Recipes” booklet for Crusty French bread in the Home Made section. The booklet include a suggestion on programming a Home Made courses for the recipe. The suggestion is almost identical to the “European” bread course in the V+ :
Rest
Mix/Knead
Rise 1
Rise 2
Rise 3
Bake
22
18
35
50
Off
70
Multigrain
The V+ has a multigrain program, similar to the V+ White and Whole Wheat programs. The V+ recipe book has Multigrain course recipes – most of which were Virtuoso Basic or Wheat course recipes.
Most loaves which involve mixtures of large amounts hard wheat wheat flour – either bread flour or whole wheat and some non-wheat flours (e.g. buckwheat, soya) flours and items like rolled oats and bulgur can be mixed and baked in regular bake and Bake (Whole) Wheat courses in either machine.
No Salt
The Virtuoso had a No Salt recipe for a bread flour white bread loaf, but did not have a dedicated course for mixing and baking salt-free bread. The V+ has a No Salt course which has a recipe in the V+ recipe book.
Any bread machine can bake bread made without salt (or using vinegar to slow the action of the yeast – e.g the Zojirushi No salt sandwich loaf). Baking bread without using salt requires using less yeast.
Etc.
The V+ has courses for bread made without sugar and vegan bread.
Loaf Size, Yeast & Salt
Medium Loaves
A recipe for a medium loaf can be mixed, kneaded, proofed and baked in the large loaf pan of a BB-PAC20 on the factory settings for the regular bake and whole wheat bake programs on the machine’s settings. . A few recipes in the “Operating Instructions and Recipes” booklet are for medium (1.5 lb.) versions of large loaf recipes.
A medium (1.5 lb.) loaf is 75% of a large loaf recipe. The dough for a medium loaf generally will flow and fill the bottom of the pan as the dough rises. The height of a medium loaf, baked, from the bottom of the pan to top of the loaf at the wall of the pan is about 8 cm at the side of the pan; to the top of the crowned (domed) top of the loaf, 10-11 cm.
I tested the 1.5 lb. (medium) recipes in the Virtuoso “Operating Instructions and Recipes” booklet. I tested the recipes without reducing salt or yeast. I tested medium recipes if given, or large recipes scaled to medium, for loaves made with Bread flour and/or Whole Wheat flour. I converted yeast in these recipes from Active dry yeast to instant yeast. I include the weight in grams of main ingredients for medium loaves, in the recipes published by Zojirushi:
Name
p.
Course
B fl.
WW fl.
H2O
Salt
IY
White Bread
14-15
Regular Basic
416
0
240
8.4
2.8
100% WW
18
Regular Wheat
0
420
320
5.6
2.8
Italian Wheat
19
Regular Wheat
256
180
270
6.3
3.8
Crusty French
44
Home made i.e. custom
416
0
240
5.6
2.8
These medium recipes worked. The dough flowed enough to fill the pan to both ends and front to back. It rose, sprung and baked into loaves within the pan and well under the lid. I put these recipes into worksheets or tables for my future reference to help work out conversions for recipes from the Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook and other sources.
These recipes will work with less salt than the recipes in manuals say.
Yeast
Medium loaf recipes from the Bread Lover’ Bread Machine Cookbook (2000) (“BLBMC“) recommended 1.75 tsp. (5.5 g.) or 2 tsp. (6.2 grams) +/- instant yeast for 3 cups of bread flour, or 1.5+ cups bread flour blended with 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour, and 1.5 tsp salt. For the BB-PAC20, I need 50-70% of the instant yeast in a BLBMC recipe. (A little more than I would use in my Panasonic.) I also bake with less salt, and reduce yeast for that reason as well.
Virtuosos supports low sodium baking, as any bread machine does.
It is possible to keep a Virtuoso running by using a V+ (BB-PDC20) pan assembly and V+ (BB-PDC20) kneading blades. Zojirushi never advised consumers or sales forces about the possibility of using V+ baking pan assembly and kneading blades in a Virtuoso.
Value
Price
The retail price of a Virtuoso, when new machines were available was a premium price – more expensive than most other bread machines.
The Virtuoso Plus BB-PDC20BA was offered for sale in the US, for $420 ($US) in July 2025 in the Zojirushi.com (USA) web store and on amazon.com. The BB-PDC20BA was offered for sale in Canada on amazon.ca, on sale, with “free” delivery for $626 ($Canada) at the same time. The currency exchange rate, shipping and tariffs were a factor in the pricing. Availability in Canada from was uncertain. Zojirushi and actors in the supply chain, and Amazon.com would not sell or ship to Canadian buyers
Virtues
The Virtuoso BB-PAC20 is quiet. It is stable, partly due to its weight, and partly because it is a balanced machine It doesn’t rattle or try to dance off the counter, unlike many machines by other manufacturers, and earlier Zojirushi bread machines.
It is good at sandwich loaves made with wheat flour, water and yeast – the kind of loaves that industrial bakers mass produce with direct (or straight) dough methods. It lets such dough “rise” (ferment), and bake for about an hour in a baking chamber smaller but as hot as a conventional oven. The loaves develops an even crumb structure and a sweet brown crust.
The inside of baking pan and the exterior surfaces of the kneading blades have been treated with a no-stick coating. The drive shafts are not coated. Non-stick coating of baking pans is a common feature of bread machines made after 1980,
The Virtuoso provides heat while the dough is being “proofed” (i.e. rising or fermenting before the dough is baked), incorporating the function of a proofing box (a device used by some bakeries and a few home bakers) into the bread machine.
The V+ has the same features.
Limitations
While Zojirushi suggests that the Virtuoso and V+ can mix, knead and bake any kind of loaf, with any ingredients a user may want, these machines are specialized. I use the Virtuoso for wheat flour loaves. It is what it is and it ain’t what it ain’t.
I have not tried to use the gluten free programs and recipes. I was not influenced by that feature.
The blog at the Zojirushi USA site said the non-stick coating:
… is made using PTFE, or polytetrafluoroethylene, a polymer that is applied in a two-step process with a primer and a topcoat. It is nonreactive, inert, ultra-smooth, hydrophobic, and resistant to abrasions, corrosion, and heat.
PTFE is a PFAS chemical which can be a hazard for the workers who may be exposed, and for persons consuming products prepared in cookware with coating made with PTFE, using the word hazard in the sense explained by the Government of Canada’s Centre for Safety and Occupational Health, (“CCHOS”), as source of potential danger:
A hazard is any source of potential damage, harm or adverse health effects on something or someone.
Basically, a hazard is the potential for harm or an adverse effect (for example, to people as health effects, to organizations as property or equipment losses, or to the environment).
The bearings and seals of the drive shafts built into the baking pan or either machine can wear out. This happened with my Virtuoso, in 2022. At that time replacement pan assemblies for that model were still available.
The bit of metal that is used to make the flat section of the socket of a kneading blades will wear out. If that part of the blade was not weak and loose, the whole machine might fail. The V+ appears to be better than the Virtuoso – the socket of the kneading blade has more material in a critical area. The kneading blades are vulnerable to wear and eventual failure. This appears to have been a design feature. The feature probably has a safety justification.
The Bread Machine Diva said in a post about the Virtuoso in 2019:
… I use my bread machine two to three times every week. In my experience, Zojirushi bread machines will last four to six years under those conditions. Paddles [kneading blade] and other parts are available on Amazon or from Zojirushi.
I do need to buy new paddles every few years.
Bread Machine Diva, “What Bread Machine Should You Buy” – why Zojirushi, July 14, 2019, last updated April 5, 2025, viewed July 30, 2025
She did not explain what led her to buying new kneading blades.
Zojirushi did/does not discuss the issue of regular replacement of parts in any of its bread machines. (Except there was a reference to a battery for the internal clock in the Virtuoso “Operating Instructions and Recipes” booklet). There was no discussion of service life or the need to periodically replace kneading blades .
Zojirushi made pan assemblies and kneading blades for the BB-PAC20 available for a few years after the model BB-PDC20 was introduced (2019); replacement parts for the BB-PAC20 disappeared from Canada by 2025. In 2025, a few retailers in the USA still offered to sell BB-PAC20 pan assemblies and ship them to Canada. Blades were gone in Canada and the USA by July 2025 except “compatible” blades without coating made by a third party manufacturer in the Amazon market. The vendor and Amazon offered prompt service without any practical assurance that the goods were fit for the purpose.
I wrote and published this in 2021. After major changes, I republished in 2025.
Bread (History)
Grain
The history of baking before 19th and 20th centuries has been uncovered by archeological studies and historical research. As the first hominids and homo sapiens evolved, they ate seeds. Hom0 sapiens began to grow certain grasses, harvest them, and dry the seeds. Several civilizations cultivated grasses (notably wheat, rice, corn) and some other plants (e.g. potatoes, yams, squash in the Americas) for starch, and legumes for more nutrition. Wheat, and other grains, became food sources in parts of the world and the civilizations that formed there.
Human beings began to crush the seeds, mix dried crushed seeds and water into a mush or paste, use fire to cook the mush Eventually human beings discovered that wet mush made with fruit or grain could become a drinkable substance containing alcohol or something gassy and that gassy mush, when heated, became somewhat sweet and tasty. Also, human beings made machines to crush the seeds into meal and flour.
In the processes of harvesting, drying, grinding and milling grain the starches in the endosperm are separated and preserved. Bread is made by mixing flour and water into a dough, kneading the dough, and baking the dough:
Bread is a combination of flour and water that has been baked. Over the years, its production has become increasingly more complex. Bread is a staple food in many countries, with cultural significance. With common sayings such as “the bread winner,” it has become one of the most important parts of the world’s diet.
When the small particles of a milled flour are mixed with water, starches dissolve. The starches are rearranged by mixing flour with water, until the wet flour became a mass of dough. Grain meal and flour are the product of grinding and milling cereal (grain). Grain and flour are NOVA class 1 unprocessed or minimally processed foods.
Dough became bread when it was baked – heated by warm air or contact with a heated metal or ceramic surface. An unleavened dough may be baked into flap of flatbread or a cracker. Unleavened bread may have some natural yeast in the ground grain, which only has a few minutes to act, after the grain is hydrated.
A grain with the precursor proteins form strands of gluten. Wheat has the precursor proteins that bond as gluten. Other grains have less. Kneading dough has been believed to alter the gluten into a web that traps the gases released as a leaven interacts with the starches or water in dough. As leavened dough is baked, it rises until the microbes have died or chemical reactions have stopped. A leavened dough could rise into a shape that would become a bun roll, or a loaf. The outside of the dough became the crust. The inside became crumb.
Leaven
In the middle East, Europe and America, for centuries, most bread has been made with a “leaven”. Leaven was discovered before bakers and scientists understood yeast or made the cultivation of yeast conceivable. A living microbiome or culture of yeast and bacteria was used to raise bread dough Bakers used such wild leavens wherever ground wheat or flour was available, for 6,000 years. The growth of a microbial culture that can leaven (and affect the flavor) bread dough is a common occurrence when flour and water are infected by Lactobacilli bacteria and “wild” yeast. Dr. Pallant’s Sourdough Culture (noted below) discussed some of the archeology and ancient history. Until leavens became commodities, leavening was a method learned by trial and error and taught by demonstration, word of mouth, apprenticeship and practice.
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, known as vintner’s yeast, brewer’s yeast and baker’s yeast, was scientifically identified as the biological agent of fermentation in the middle of the 19th century. Sourdough Culture discussed the success of Austrian industty, late in the 19th century, in cultivating baker’s yeast, producing wet yeast cakes, and bringing the innovations to the USA.The industrial production of baker’s yeast (and chemical agents like sodium bicarbonate) began in the 19th century.
For most of the 20th century, industrially grown baker’s yeast was a commodity and dominated the business of baking. The yeast industry developed processes for breeding, feeding, harvesting, compressing and transporting yeast and developed products for people who were able and willing to bake bread instead of buying it. In middle the 20th century, the yeast producers developed dry yeast and started to sell dry yeast. Late in the 20th century, the dried yeast processes were changed, and various new dried yeast products
There were bakers in France, parts of the USA and elsewhere in the world who continued to use traditional leaven. In France, bakers used both cultivated yeast and traditional leaven. Traditional leaven would be used to make pre-ferments to affect flavor, and cultivated yeast was used to get dough to rise faster and more predictably.
Traditional leaven was also practiced in the sourdough traditions in the USA. Dr. Pallant’s Sourdough Culture discussed the way that natural leaven was presented in the myths about sourdough and about the miners of the San Francisco and Klondike gold rushes in the Western USA and Alaska. Some bakers in San Francisco promoted their their product as “authentic” sourdough on the basis that there is something special about a small area of northern California and used the California Gold Rush myth as a promotional story. Dr. Pallant praises modern bakers and authors including Peter Reinhart (below) and Chad Robertson, (author of Tartine Bread (2010); a founder of the eponymous bakery). Prof. Pallant noted that the San Francisco myth has been deflated by the discoveries that the production of lactic acid by Lactobacilli favours the success of “wild” bread yeast, and of the discovery of several kinds of Lactobacillus by analysis of the genomes.
Modern Bread Production
Most people purchase bread made by industrial bakers from grocery stores. Some shop at bakeries. Unpackaged bread is a NOVA class 3 processed food, if the bread as baked under these conditions:
Processes include various preservation or cooking methods, and, in the case of breads and cheese, non-alcoholic fermentation. Most processed foods have two or three ingredients, and are recognizable as modified versions of Group 1 foods. They are edible by themselves or, more usually, in combination with other foods. The purpose of processing here is to increase the durability of Group 1 foods, or to modify or enhance their sensory qualities.
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Packaged industrially baked bread is a NOVA class 4 ultraprocessed food due to the additives and the processing of ingredients:
Additives in ultra-processed foods include some also used in processed foods, such as preservatives, antioxidants and stabilizers. Classes of additives found only in ultra-processed products include those used to imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of foods or to disguise unpalatable aspects of the final product. These additives include dyes and other colours, colour stabilizers; flavours, flavour enhancers, non-sugar sweeteners; and processing aids such as carbonating, firming, bulking and anti-bulking, de-foaming, anti-caking and glazing agents, emulsifiers, sequestrants and humectants.
A multitude of sequences of processes is used to combine the usually many ingredients and to create the final product (hence ‘ultra-processed’). The processes include several with no domestic equivalents, such as hydrogenation and hydrolysation, extrusion and moulding, and pre-processing for frying.
The overall purpose of ultra-processing is to create branded, convenient (durable, ready to consume), attractive (hyper-palatable) and highly profitable (low-cost ingredients) food products designed to displace all other food groups. Ultra-processed food products are usually packaged attractively and marketed intensively.
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Many people have kitchens and ovens and could bake bread if they purchased flour and other ingredients and had time, and knowledge of technique and science. It is a specialized activity. Bread baking may have been a part of the education of students in home economics courses. Persons who work in bakeries may have taken courses in vocational educational institutions or learned from experienced bakers in work experience.
Modern Ingredients
Flour
Wheat Flour Types
Whole wheat and bread flour weigh the same amount per unit of volume. Whole wheat flour, pastry flour and American all-purpose flour have proteins to make gluten but not enough to work in modern bread baking.
Protein, Milling Standards
Bread flour milled to US and European standards (and Canadian All-Purpose) at 12.5% has more of the proteins that bond to form gluten. Gliadin and glutenin are insoluble proteins in in wheat flour, and an smaller amounts in flour made with other cereals. When water is added to flour, these proteins bond into gluten a composite of storage proteins … found in wheat, barley, rye, oats, related species and hybrids … “. Gluten gives elasticity to dough, helping it keep its shape and often gives the final product a chewy texture. Gluten also relaxes iwhich lets the dough flow and rise.
Bakers knead dough, stretching and folding it on itself, repeating the motion for several minutes. The dominant theories are that kneading “structures” the gluten, or increases the hydration of flour. A baker can pause after mixing or start kneading, or pause during kneading. The dough should be viscous (tenacious and elastic) to hold together, but extensible to stretch, and to flow. A professional baker will probably use a mechanical mixer; many home bakers may have one. A mechanical mixer or stand mixer uses mixing arms, a paddle or a spiral dough hook in a circular or elleptical motion. A mixer has a range of speeds. The baker uses a slow speed to mix the ingredients and a higher speed to knead.
Milling aims to refine flour to achieve minimum and uniform levels of protein. Milling also can extract and concentrate protein as vital wheat gluten (“VWG”) powder or flour:
Consisting of mainly gliadin and glutenin, wheat gluten is unique among cereal proteins based on its ability to form a cohesive and viscoelastic mass. This rheological property makes it a dynamic material that is able to grow and keep the gasses within the dough during extended fermentation periods. The viscoelastic nature also provides the oven spring (increase in height due to the expansion of gasses) that we see in the oven.
….
The addition of VWG generally increases the dough mixing time and fermentation time. As more protein solids are added, more water is needed for complete flour hydration.
Due to its cohesive and viscoelastic properties, its main function is a dough strengthener. It is also a film former, binder, texturizer, fat emulsifying agent, processing aid, stabilizer, water absorption and retention agent, thermosetting agent, and a flavor and color binder.
Vital gluten can absorb almost twice its weight in water (140–180% water). The quality of dry vital gluten is estimated with the Brabender farinograph or Chopin Alveograph. The breadmaking quality of VWG is also assessed through standardized baking tests.
Modern bakers, depending on location, culture, and resources still produce unleavened or partly leavened flat bread. A rising agent is necessary to create bubbles in the dough that create the bubbled texture of the “crumb” inside the crust of the baked loaf.
Rising is caused by the infection of the wet flour by yeast. The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as vintner’s yeast, brewer’s yeast or baker’s yeast, causes fermentation of fruit and grain, which makes it possible to make wine, beer (and spirits) and to leaven dough to bake bread.
Yeast consumes some of the starches in dough- it ferments, creating gas, which is trapped in gluten in the dough, which makes the bread rise, after the dough has been kneaded. Bakerpedia explains, condensing a number of complex biochemical processes:
When yeasted dough ferments [it] rises and increases in volume, and flavor is developed. Yeast converts starch in flour into sugar, carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol. CO2 gas is trapped by gluten proteins in the flour which causes dough to rise. Fermentation results in a light and airy crumb.
The propagation of yeast and the fermentation of dough accelerate. The dough rises in 2 or 3 stages: bulk fermentation, intermediate, and final proof. Dough is folded or knocked down to release gas at the end of the bulk fermentation, and folded when the loaf is shaped. The dough rises again in the baking pan and springs when yeast warms up after the pan goes in the hot oven, before the heat kills the yeast.
Bacteria and yeast are “wild” organisms in the air or on the ingredients. The traditional method was based on natural infection. Some bacteria could cause interesting tastes, which were not always well received by consumers and bakers.
Some bakers took yeasty foam over the top of ale being fermented as the yeast consumed the starches in the brewed liquid, which brewers called the “wort”. Bakers began to cultivate yeast at the end of the 18th century. The industrial production of yeast began in the 19th century. Industrial bakeries mainly use yeast leaven evenly, quickly and efficiently. In the late 18th century, bakers, chemists and biologists in the Austria-Hungarian empire found a way of growing cultures of pure baker’s yeast. Pure yeast was skimmed, compressed into cakes of wet yeast. This process was adapted and industrialized. The Austrian Fleischmann family industrialized the process in the USA in the late 19th century. 20th century changes in yeast production:
During World War II, Fleischmann’s developed a granulated active dry yeast for the United States armed forces, which did not require refrigeration and had a longer shelf-life and better temperature tolerance than fresh yeast; … . The company created yeast that would rise twice as fast, cutting down on baking time.
In 1973, Lesaffre created instant yeast (also called “quick rise” or “fast acting” yeast), which has gained considerable use and market share at the expense of both fresh and active dry yeast in their various applications. Instant yeast differs from active dry yeast in several ways: Instant yeast rises faster than active dry yeast; instant yeast can be directly added to the dry ingredients, whereas active dry yeast should be mixed with liquid (water, milk or beer) and proofed before mixing; instant yeast has a lower moisture content; and instant yeast is formed of smaller granules.
Cultivated processed yeast became the main leavening agent for bread baking. natural leaven was still used to create pre-ferments – e.g. levains, sponges, biga and pâte fermentée (old dough) used in conjunction with baker’s yeast. The traditional method of rising dough have been perpetuated by artisanal bakers and bakers who bake sourdough.
The most precise way of measuring is by weight. Commercial bakers measure many ingredient by weight. The measurement of concentrated ingredients including yeast (and salt) by weight is also desirable for home bakers and bread machine bakers. Few home bakers have scales precise enough.
Some sources say for instant yeast: 1 tsp = 3.15 grams. Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press, 2001) says on p. 28 that 1 tsp instant yeast = .11 oz which converts to 3.12 grams. It is hard for home user to verify the weight of a teaspoon of instant yeast with home tools and methods.
Commercial bakers also use chemical leaven for some bread: baking powder and baking soda for corn bread, soda bread, cakes and other baking. Baking powder is baking soda mixed with cream of tartar. Kraft Foods Magic Baking Powder does not provide Food Facts on the labels of small jars in Canada. The published information is that 1 tsp. of baking powder has 300 mg. of sodium. Substitutions for baking powder involve 1/4 tsp of baking soda plus some acid (e.g. vinegar, cream of tartar) for each tsp baking powder. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate. It has 1,259 mg. of sodium per teaspoon. A functional substitution for baking soda and baking powder: potassium bicarbonate, the key ingredient of Featherweight – not an widely available (i.e. in grocery stores) product. It is available as a supplement but has a list of side effects and do not use if taking medication warnings. Please Don’t Pass the Salt has recipes for quick breads, and suggestions on low sodium “baking mixes”. “Natural” products that that might trap CO2. Some recipes for some baked goods suggest that some natural products may trap CO₂ e.g. whipped egg whites.
Salt
Mark Kurlansky’s book Salt: a World History (2002) tells of the use of salt to bake bread in Egypt (3,000 BCE), The production of salt may have started about 8,000 years ago.
Salt is part of the process for most bread sold by grocery stores and bakeries large and small. Bread is high in sodium, as an effect of the baking process. Salt is a standard and necessary ingredient in most formulas and recipes. A few bread styles, such as Tuscan bread, are made without salt. Salt:
affects the development of gluten. It affects chemical bonds in amino acids in proteins in flour that has been exposed to mixed with water. It makes the gluten more tenacious and elastic;
controls yeast which affects fermentation. Fermentation affects flavour but it also affects rise, which affects the size of the loaf and the production line.
The right ratio of flour to salt and yeast, among other things, means a loaf that will rise on time, and not overproof or balloon. The loaf should spring in the oven and crown to form a dome.
Salt can be reduced, with a reduction in the amount of yeast. Some books and internet pages eliminating salt but incorrectly list the same amount of yeast that would be used if there was salt in the recipe! This will may bake or collapse. In a bread machine, the dough will balloon and may or collapse before it overflows the pan.
Every reduction in salt has to be balanced with a reduction of yeast. Please Don’t Pass the Salt has recipes for yeasted breads and a note on the general adjustment for yeasted bread recipes. Artisan bread baking writers suggest that adjusting the salt in formulas leads to unsatisfactory results – e.g. Peter Reinhart, Artisan Bread Every Day (Ten Speed Press, 2009) at p. 15 suggests not reducing by more than 10%. Salt and kneading affect gluten. It is easy to get to reduce salt to 50% and 33% reduce the salt added to the mixing machine when dough is mixed. These reductions are not usually made by industrial bakers. Changes in salt will affect the gluten, affecting texture, and storage of bread, as well as fermentation and taste.
An accepted rule of thumb is reducing proportionately by weight to maintain the same percentage.
Goal
Reduction
Use Salt
Use Yeast
50%
50%
50%
50%
33%
67%
33%
33%
Professional bakers and some home bakers express ingredient lists or recipes in baker’s percentage (B%) to use consistent processes to manufacture a consistent product. Professional bakers may use 2 pounds of salt and .77 pound of instant yeast per 100 pounds of flour. The B% for salt is 2%; the B% for instant yeast with most loaves made with bread flour is .7% but B% can vary. It may be over 1%. A yeast B% of .7% in one loaf works out to .3 ounces = 8.5 grams = 8,500 mg. salt per 3 cups (15 ounces) of flour. A normal loaf of bread weighing 1 ½ lbs. (a bread machine medium loaf) has 3,400 milligrams of sodium per loaf – several hundred milligrams per slice or serving. Home bakers work with small amounts of salt and yeast. Bread machines use very small amounts for single loaves.
Conversion? The majority of recipes refer to standard ground table salt. For table salt: 1 tsp = 5.7 grams or .20 oz. Some fine crystal table salt on the market in the US weighs 7 grams per teaspoon. I do not pay attention to this information unless the recipe I am referring to has used a coarse or fine salt:
America’s Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated The Science of Good Cooking (2012) lists several brands of kosher salt and sea salt and compares them to table salt, suggesting that Morton’s brand is the standard for table salt at 1 tsp = 7.15 g.
Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press, 2001) says on p. 28 that 1 tsp of table salt = .25 oz which converts to 7 grams.
The size of the salt crystals affects solubility, which can affect the distribution of salt in the dough, and effect of salt on yeast. However a gram of kosher salt works as well as a gram of table salt for baking bread.
Resources
Skill, knowledge, Practice
Grinding grain, milling flour and baking bread were skills taught by demonstration; bakers learned by doing for centuries. Emily Buehler wrote:
Reading about bread will not be enough … the only way to know dough and bread is to have your hands in it – practice. … “failures” are just opportunities to learn. … messed up bread often still tastes good!”
….
Good bread is not the result of one brilliant mind; it came about by trial and error, over the centuries … by ordinary people; it does not require special talents or an advanced degree. Relearning the process from the beginning is surprisingly simple. … making bread “by hand” might seem to be a lost art, but it remains accessible to anyone …
Emily Buehler, Bread Science, (2006, 2021. Two Blue Books, Hillsborough N.C., USA)
Sources
I will mention some sources, their publications. I will start with a “who” section for several sources.
Much of the information published in books or electronic media including the internet, written in or since the late 20th century by agricultural sources, millers, bakers, restaurateurs, journalists and other writers assumes an understanding of milled flour, clean water, energy for machinery and ovens, cultivated yeast, science and technology that happened in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Cookbooks were a popular format for communicating knowledge about food and cooking, including baking, and including bread baking. They are transitory products. Recipe books respond to trends and fads. Cooking technology changes. Ingredients change.
Many cookbooks have been written by persons without accreditation or formal vocational training who had worked in restaurants, kitchens and food preparation, including bakeries and had talked to persons who cooked for sale and prepared food for themselves. The sciences of food involve
the chemistry of heated food,
the chemical composition of food,
the use of chemical compounds in cellular biology,
the anatomy and physiology of digestion,
the physiology of taste,
the psychology of taste,
the social psychology of food preferences, and
the social psychology and economics of marketing and communication.
The San Jose Mercury Writer
Who
In The Bread Bible Beth Hensperger mentioned her experience baking in a restaurant kitchen, holding workshops, teaching and writing in the introductory chapter, “The Art and Science of Good Baking”. She became a writer on bread. She was a journalist and columnist with a following among home bakers. She wrote 2 books titled as Williams Sonoma cookbooks.
Hensperger wrote about things she knew, and went into some detail. Her books, including The Bread Bible, were directed at the perception that home bakers wanted information though form of recipes being shared, presented in the cookbook format using measurement by volume (e.g. cups, tablespoons, teaspoons and fractions of those standards). The Bread Bible‘s recipes:
were for home bakers who baked in ovens;
mainly used ingredients available to retail customers in stores in large American urban centers.
Her list of works in Goodreads contains of 30 works in before 2011. Her biography on the Amazon Store said:
Beth Hensperger, a New Jersey-born who now considers herself a California native, has been educating, writing, and demo-lecturing about the art of baking bread and cooking for thirty years. …
Hensperger’s writing career began when she was chosen as the guest cooking instructor for the March 1985 issue of Bon Appétit. Now she is the author of over twenty cookbooks, including the best-selling Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook series, which includes Not Your Mother’s Recipes for Entertaining, Not Your Mother’s Family Favorites, Not Your Mother’s Weeknight Suppers, and NYMSC Recipes for Two along with the blockbuster first volume, Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook. Also from The Harvard Common Press are The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook, The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, and The Best Quick Breads. She is also the author of The Bread Bible, winner of the 2000 James Beard Book Award in Baking, and nominated twice for an IACP Cookbook Award.
Hensperger wrote a food column, “Baking with the Seasons,” for the San Jose Mercury News (which was nominated for a James Beard Award in newspaper journalism) for over 12 years until the newspaper downsized.
Beth Hensperger had a web site with many recipes, at one time. The web site was gone by 2021; her domain was high-jacked by web squatters. Information about her life and career are drowned in returns in searches by results for pages published for online booksellers selling copies of her books .
There is a note by “Darcie” March 25, 2021 in the blog section of the otherwise paywalled Eat Your Books web site:
We learned through cookbook author Rick Rodgers that acclaimed San Francisco Bay Area-based food writer, cooking instructor, and bread baking maven Beth Hensperger has died after years of declining health. An editor who worked with Hensperger confirmed her passing although there has not yet been an official announcement.
When The Bread Bible: Beth Hensperger’s 300 Favourite Recipes, (1999) Chronicle Books, San Francisco was published, Hensperger was known as a columnist and as the author of 5 books. The Bread Bible earned the James Beard Foundation award in 2000 in the Baking & Dessert category. It has a cover photograph and some photographs of dough and bread products. It was published as an e-book, apparently in 2013, when it appeared in Amazon Kindle format. As of 2025 is for sale online as an e-book 0r a used book. It has 300 recipes. A person might buy the book as a resource, and use it successfully as the available ingredients changed.
Beth Hensperger’s The Bread Bible is lengthy, but is neither authoritative or complete. The subtitle, “Beth Hensberger’s 300 Favorite Recipes” really gets to what this book is: a large collection of good recipes.
The Bread Bible did not discuss commercial baking. It mentioned but did not discuss the artisanal baking movement, which was known in California in the 1980s. It mentions balanced recipes but does not explain baker’s math or baker’s percentages. Few books except trade publications and education material for baking courses did.
Active dry yeast was the preferred way of leavening bread made with wheat flour in the second half of the 20th century. Active yeast was improved near the end of the 20th century when the processes for drying yeast and packaging. Yeast processors retained familiar ways of packaging the produce – foil packets and small jars, filled the packages with more live yeast, and changed the description of the amount, by volume of half and ounce of dry yeast measured by weight. In recipes, Hensperger used active dry yeast measurements, familiar in the late 90s, stating the a half ounce packet was a “scant tablespoon” active dry yeast by volume. A .5 ounce (8 gram) packet, for several years before 2025, has been 2¼ teaspoons. This affects the use of the recipes. It requires a baker to make an adjustment when using active dry yeast, or to make a calculation to convert if using other kinds of dry yeast.
Bread baking has somehow taken on a mysterious quality, making it seem an intimidating act for many people. The secret to making good bread is that there is no secret. Let your imagination help you break any rules you imagine exist to daunt you.
Reckless Appetites, Ecco Press, 1993
Later in the opening chapter she cited books that had influenced her: theTassajara Bread Book (1970), A World of Breads (1966). The effects of water, yeast and flour on each other and of a hot oven on wet dough are real constraints.
Within a page of that epigraph, Hensperger noted:
Successful baking combines the elements of a balanced recipe, proper equipment, and good ingredients with skilled hands and a dash of imagination.”
The Bread Bible describes how dough it mixed and bread is baked in the chapters: “The Baking Process” and “The Elements of a Loaf: Ingredients”. The information reflects the common sense of late 20th century bakers, based on centuries of baking.
Her discussion of Yeast in the “Ingredients” chapter goes into some details – e.g. how to acquire compressed wet yeast cakes and bricks. She is vague on history of the cultivation and processing of yeast, but makes the point that yeast are microscopic living things.
She mainly discusses active dry yeast (without mentioning it was an invention first marketed in the 1940s). She emphasizes that the contents of a container of active dry yeast include live yeast, and states that the live yeast has to be “proofed” (activated) by hydration and nourishment with sugar, and is perishable. She discusses how active dry yeast was presented on the baking supplies shelves of grocery stores. It was and is sold in strips of 3 foil half ounce (8 gram) pouches and glass jars holding 4 oz. (113 g.) or 8 oz. (227 g.).
She discussed other processed yeast products that could be added dry that were dried and processed differently . She said instant, Quick-rise and Bread Machine were interchangeable with other dry yeasts. Indeed, all are baker’s yeast, that consume starch and pump out gas.
She said instant yeast, which she called a European strain, had started to be available at the end of ’90s. She was referring to the LeSaffre products sold in the USA by King Arthur Flour. She did not present, and may not have fully understood information about how active dry yeast and instant yeast were made, summarized (in 2022):
Instant yeast: … used in my kitchen since King Arthur introduced it to home bakers over 25 years ago. Specifically, … SAF Red instant yeast (or SAF Gold for sweet breads). …
….
… Originally, the classic active dry yeast manufacturing process dried live yeast cells quickly, at a high temperature. The result? Only about 30% of the cells survived. Dead cells “cocooned” around the live ones, making it necessary to “proof” the yeast — dissolve it in warm water — before using.
These days, active dry yeast is manufactured using a much gentler process, resulting in many more live cells. Thus, it’s no longer necessary to dissolve active dry yeast in warm water before using — feel free to mix it with the dry ingredients, just as you do instant yeast.
Active dry yeast, compared to instant yeast, is considered more “moderate.” It gets going more slowly, but eventually catches up to instant — think of the tortoise and the hare. Many bread-bakers appreciate the longer rise times active dry yeast encourages; it’s during fermentation of its dough that bread develops flavor.
….
Instant yeast … is manufactured to a smaller granule size than active dry. Thus, with more surface area exposed to the liquid in a recipe, it dissolves more quickly, and gets going faster than active dry. While you can proof it if you like, it’s not necessary; like active dry yeast, simply mixing it into your bread dough along with the rest of the dry ingredients works just fine.
Hensperger noted instant yeast, bread machine yeast and Quick-rise yeast were dried differently than active dry yeast, had finer (smaller) particles, and used different coatings to make the particles of yeast:
instant yeast was coated in ascorbic acid and sugar;
bread machine yeast was coated, with ascorbic acid and “a flour buffer”.
Quick-Rise yeast was grown differently than active dry, and treated with conditioners including emulsifiers and anti-oxidants.
Fleischmann’s still uses Quick-Rise as the name for its fast rising dry yeast product. Fleischmann’s may have a trade mark or some protection for the name. Competitors use different names. The selling points for fast rising yeast were that it could be used dry, and that it was faster than active dry yeast. A given volume – say a tablespoon – has more live yeast cells. It was faster because it the yeast multiplied and made gas sooner.
The Bread Bible discussed mixing dough and kneading dough by hand, in electric mixers, and in food processors. It had a chapter on bread machines.
Bread Machine Cookbook
The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (“BLBMC“) was published by the Harvard Common Press in 2000. I have had a copy for over a decade. I discussed the 2000 edition in this blog in a post first published in 2020, edited extensively in 2025.
The 2000 edition has good sections on ingredients, dough and baking in general. It explained how bread machines could consolidate mixing, kneading, fermentation and baking reasonably good bread in a pan, in a small device. The book had several problems.
In 2023 and 2024 Quarto (a company related to Harvard Common) published two books based on the BLBMC. Both were placed with Walmart and Target stores, and on Amazon, where a book complements the sale of bread machines. Both were sold to libraries and educational web sites and services. The new books:
2023 – Bread machine baking for beginners : effortless perfect bread (“Beginners“), an “affordable abridged edition” of the BLBMC; and
2024 – a “newly revised and expanded” edition of the BLBMC.
The posthumous editions are not new. They do not overcome the problems of the 2000 edition. They extended the life of this book as a profitable title for the publisher, and perhaps for Hensperger’s estate.
The Artisan
Who
Peter Reinhart has been a baker, entrepreneur, competitive baker, advocate of collaboration among bakers, educator and consultant. He discussed his life in a chapter of Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads (2007). He baked while a member of troupe of performers in the 1970s, and in a group operating a whole food cafe in Boston. He became a member of a New Religious Movement called the Order of MANS, a Christian group organized like a Catholic religious order. He spent several years working in social service. He was one of the founders of Brother Juniper’s Cafe in Sonoma in 1986. Brother Juniper was named for Junípero Serra, the 18th century Spanish missionary beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in 1988. The objections of Americans descended from Indigenous people to the Spanish catholic missions in California in the 17th century did not influence 20th century entrepreneurs and consumers.
Peter Reinhart was an independent baker in California. Many of them competed against industrial bakeries (and against the independent bakeries that promoted “California” sourdough). He left Brother Juniper’s in 1993, and became an educator and promoter. He joined the Bread Baker’s Guild of America, and attended Raymond Calvel’s baking workshops in America in the 1990s. The James Beard Foundation’s award to him in 1995 for a bread baking competition gave him time in France to study the methods of highly regarded bakeries, which had evolved from Calvel’s work. He suggested that the encounters of Americans with French bread influenced a movement for artisanal baking in America. He later said, referring to the 1990s:
The word artisan lost lost its full impact the day that Safeway began using the brand name Artisan to describe their store-baked loaves.”
Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads, (2007)
His first book was Brother Juniper’s Bread Book: Slow Rise As Method and Metaphor (1991). He books in the 1990s and 2000s included:
Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers (1998, 2006);
The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread (2001);
American Pie: My Search for the Perfect Pizza (2003);
Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor (2007);
Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Breads Every Day (2009)
The Baking Teacher/Chemist
Who
Emily Jane Buehler worked in a coop bakery, and later in Weaver Street Bakery in Carrboro, North Carolina. She met Peter Reinhart at a bread even in Asheville in 2006, and is mentioned in his 2007 book. She taught community courses before she wrote Bread Science which she published:
in print using the publishing firm name Two Blue Books in 2006 and
as an e-book in 2014, republished in 2021 in a 2nd edition.
She researched the science of grain, milling, dough and baking in the professional journal collections of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
She presents the science of gluten and fermentation, the practical technique of handling dough, an explanation of bakers’ percentage, and a discussion of the techniques of making and using pre-ferments (also known as sponges and starters). These techniques and stages affect fermentation, which affects the rising of the dough and the flavour of the bread. They are used in making sourdough bread, and less common – actually rare – in making yeasted bread. Chemically leavened bread rises in proportion to the amount of chemical leavener, water, starch and heat.
The Sourdough Professor
Who
Eric Pallant, professor of Environmental Science & Sustainability at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, USA . He is a practitioner of sourdough baking.
Dr. Pallant was introduced to sourdough when he was given a sourdough starter when he was a new assistant professor in 1988. Sourdough Culture (2021) is organized around his investigation of the story that the starter given to him was descended from a starter given to a backpacker hiking near Cripple Creek, Colorado in the 1970s, said to have been started during the 1893 gold rush near Telluride, was propagated and came into his possession a century later. Dr. Pallant has written about sourdough baking on the Web at Maurizi0 Leo’s The Perfect Loaf site. (Pallant’s posts and essays on that site are indexed.) The site has been published since 2012. Maurizi0 Leo has published a book of the same name in 2022 and has recorded several videos on a YouTube channel of the same name.
Sourdough Culture
Sourdough Culture (2021) addressed the history of baking in sections on archeology, the wheat trade in the Roman Empire, and the ovens and bread of Pompei. I found this book almost by accident, as I was looking for another book in the stacks at a branch of my local library system in 2025.
Videos
YouTube videos that demonstrate technique and what dough looks like as it is kneaded. Search tools drive users to sift through many search returns. Lesaffre’s Red Star brand has some useful videos on its channel:
The Babylonians, the Egyptians and the Romans had mechanical kneading drives driven by human or animal labour. Europeans used human labour to knead bread until the energy transformations and innovations of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Mixers
Modern professional bakers work with hundred of kilograms of flour and water. Professional bakers have control over how long to mix/knead, rise (ferment/proof), bake, and over oven temperature. Ingredients are mixed and kneaded in large industrial mixers, fermented, put into pans and put into ovens, baked, turned out and packaged. The dough goes into pans in small irregular lumps. It has to rise and flow to fill the pan, spring when pans go in the oven, but not spring above the limited headspace of the pan. Professional bakers may use 10-15 minutes of “intensive mixing” – the mechanical mixing of yeasted white flour dough was dominant in professional bakeries for French loaves until Raymond Calvel devised the hybid style in the 1960s. Intensive mixing develops gluten in white flour rapidly. Home bakers with stand mixers use slower speeds due to limitations of machinery (see the stand mixer review by America’s Test Kitchen in print and YouTube) or to use a hybrid, modified or improved mixing method. Overmixing is a risk for professional bakers using industrial mixers. Machine mixing can stretch dough too much or too often, breaking the gluten strands. An overmixed dough cannot hold the gases, and will not rise. Intensive mixing may affect a loaf with effects short of the complete failure caused by overmixing. Home bakers can have the same problem.
Mixers available to the home baker:
Food processors can mix dough, although a food processor might only handle 3 cups of flour, and has one speed – very fast. The mixing time may be less than a minute. Some food processors have a dough speed and/or special blade to mix dough. The risk of overmixing dough in a food processor is well recognized.
A home stand mixer can handle several cups of flour, at low-medium speed settings. The power output of a Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a 5 quart bowl may be 325 watts. Larger stand mixers may output 800 watts. A Bosch Compact Kitchen Machine may output 400 watts into its dough hook in its stand mixer configuration. They have to be used at the right settings and for a short time.
A bread machine can mix and knead dough using the machine’s dough program.
I make a soup from a recipe in the book Vegan Under Pressure by the nutrition/cooking writer Jill Nussinow. Her web site is The Veggie Queen. She promotes the book on her web site. I also refer to Hip Pressure Cooking, by the cooking writer Laura Pazzaglia for information about cooking in an electric pressure cooker. Both books were written before the Instant Pot came on the market, but are applicable to pressure-multi-cookers.
White Bean and Cabbage Soup
Jill Nussinow, in Vegan under Pressure (p. 162), for White Bean and Cabbage Soup recommends 1½ cups of dried Cannellini beans, soaked. Cannellini is a variety or cultivar of Phaseolus vulgaris, the American common bean. It is an oval white dry bean also often sold as the white kidney bean, nearly as large as a red kidney bean. 1½ cups of beans absorb most of 2½ cups of water overnight. She also suggests Great Northern beans and Navy beans, other Phaseolus vulgaris white beans.
The recipe gets color from the use of ¼ cup of chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and from diced fresh or canned diced tomatoes. I use no salt added canned tomatoes. It gets flavor from tomatoes and from onion, garlic, Italian seasoning and bay leaves. Salt is not listed as an ingredient.
Sun-dried tomatoes are dried in salt and have sodium. I use “ready to eat” sun-dried tomatoes sold in sealed pressed blocks by San Remo. I can buy these when a couple of local stored have them in stock. The tomatoes appear to be Turkish. The Food Facts label defines a serving of three tomatoes as 15 grams, and states this serving has 314 mg. of sodium. I try to get mix of larger and smaller tomatoes, and use 6 tomatoes, to get about 45 grams or ¼ cup of chopped pieces. The sun-dried tomatoes contribute about 900 mg. sodium and are the main source of sodium in this recipe.
White Kidney beans
For the last few years, I used the Walmart store brand Great Value dry white kidney beans for this soup but changed when Walmart stopped selling those dry beans.
Italian Seasoning
Jill Nussinow’s recipe for Italian Seasoning in Vegan Under Pressure (p. 41) makes just a little more than 160 ml – about ⅔ of a cup. I make a batch every few months.
It involves dried whole herbs or leaves (crumbled leaves), and a few ground spices:
Ingredient
Amount
basil
3 Tbsp.
oregano
2 Tbsp.
marjoram
1 Tbsp.
parsley
1 Tbsp.
thyme
2 tsp.
summer savory
1 tsp.
rosemary (ground or finely chopped)
1 tsp.
dried minced garlic
1 Tbsp
dried minced onion
2 tsp.
dried red pepper flakes
≦ ½ tsp.
*optional: minced dried lemon peel or lemon verbena
2 tsp.
Availability of the component herbs depends on practices of the growers, wholesalers and the retail merchants. I had to search for dry crumbled summer savory when a small local herb firm stopped providing this herb to local grocery stores.
My spreadsheet for 2024 will be published as a Google Sheet on my Google Drive account. There will be a link on my cycling page. I rode my Cannondale Topstone. I rode 7,581,67 Km.
I continued to make notes of maintenance. I continued to lubricate the drive train with paraffin, which protects YBN SLC11 chains from elongation wear.
I had a shop rebuild the wheels with new rims and hubs. I installed new pulley wheels in the drive train, with Shimano Ultegra pulley wheels with sealed bearings. Those pulleys are compatible with Shimano 105 drive train components. I installed a new stem to raise the handlebars a couple of cm. (which seems to be only way with a carbon fork and steerer in an alloy frame, as I could not install an extender compatible with Cannondale components on the steerer tube). My tires stood up well but I will replace them.
The weather in November and December restricted rides.
This post mainly discusses shopping for instant yeast in 2024.
In 2000, in Beth Hensperger in her Bread Lovers’ Bread Machine Cookbook, suggested that bread machine recipes should be different if the bread machine baker used Lesaffre’s SAF Red Instant Yeast, as opposed to other bread Machine yeast. In my 2018 post Dry Yeast, I suggested that yeasts sold as Quick Rising or Bread Machine yeasts were equivalent to, or were instant yeasts with confusing names. I used SAF Red Instant Yeast but I experimented with the amount of yeast and salt. I have tried to reduce salt in the bread I eat, and spend time reconciling recipes to the bread machines I used.
Over the last few years, I was able to buy SAF Red Instant in 450 g bags from King Arthur online either directly from King Arthur’s e-commerce “sales” pages or in the Amazon market twice since 2018. I stored it in a freezer – a bag lasted for a couple of years, and hundreds of medium bread machine loaves.
There was a shortage of yeast in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Active dry yeast is now available. There is no discussion in the media of a shortage of instant yeast products. Indeed, there are instant yeasts available in the USA and Canada.
Red Barn stores, a local grocery chain was sold vacuum bags of instant yeast, branded as Red Barn, a few years ago. I bought and used a bag.
I was not able to purchase SAF Instant Red in July 2024. King Arthur still sells it but its web store the site refuses to process and order that is to be shipped to a buyer outside the USA. It was possible to buy active dry yeast in grocery stores in Victoria, BC, Canada but product called instant yeast had disappeared. Walmart.ca showed 3 instant yeasts in their e-commerce but not in stock in local (Victoria) stores or available online:
SAF Instant Red,
Bob’s Red Mill Instant Yeast (Bob’s Red Mill no longer offers that an Instant Yeast in it e-commerce pages),
Lallemand Instaferm was available on some Canadian e-commerce sites and at Costco, but shipping charges and Costco membership fees added to the price. Searches of the Walmart stores and markets returned active dry yeasts, including Fleischmann’s, and Bob’s Red Mill Active Dry Yeast to searches for instant yeast.
Fleischmann’s markets instant yeast as “Quick-Rise” in 139 g. glass jars sold at about $5 a jar (Walmart). Fleischmann’s also sells instant yeast as Bread Machine yeast. The Real Canadian Superstore’s Wholesale Club warehouse store listed 139 g. jars of both kinds of the instant yeast online at about $6 a jar.
I found a 450 g. foil vacuum bag of Fleischmann’s IDY (instant dry yeast) in the Real Canadian Superstore’s Wholesale Club warehouse store in Esquimalt for $6. It performed as well as SAF Instant Red in my bread machine
It would appear that the yeast manufacturers have been making yeast but perhaps deceasing the total amounts sold to for retail sale, and playing with regional supply and distribution. The search engines for many retail stores are not useful at finding things,
My browsing led me to a hit about pizza dough. In 2003 Peter Reinhart had published recipes for pizza dough in his book American Pie made with instant yeast. Daniel DiMuzio had a recipe for pizza dough made with a preferment made with instant yeast in Bread Baking: An Artisans Perspective (2010). The baking yeast companies market “pizza crust” yeast, which is not sold, as far as I can see, in Canadian retail stores. Pizza crust yeast:
… is a type of instant yeast … does not require proofing … . In addition to this, pizza crust yeast are also fortified with dough relaxers to prevent snapping back of dough when rolled, and these relaxers can cause the dough to rise quickly in the oven.
… differs from instant yeast … contains L-Cysteine which is an amino acid that serves as a reducing agent for breaking down the proteins in gluten. L-Cysteine helps to soften gluten and therefore relax dough. This is what makes dough not to shrink or spring back when you roll it.
Through this conditioning, a softer, better textured and high volume end result is achieved. Also, it becomes possible to mix, roll and bake pizzas without any proofing needed.
Another difference you’ll notice when comparing the instant dry yeast with the pizza crust yeast is that doughs made with the latter will have a much lower temperature, better consistency and will be easier to handle, even though the difference is by a small degree.
Pasta is a starchy food products that has been cooked in Italy for centuries. Other food productd made with wheat – e.g. couscous – are known in countries around the Mediterranean.
Italian buyers have favoured semolina, a coarsely ground flour ground from Durham wheat, a hard, high-protein wheat. Modern “fresh’ pasta recipes for pasta dough for manual and electric pasta machines (that press and cut the dough) call for some semolina, some lower protein “soft” flour (e.g. US “all purpose”) or white bread flour, and water. Some recipes call for some salt, and for eggs to make egg pasta noodles. The dough recipes are similar in proportions of flour and water to bread formulas
Wheat flour will form gluten when water is added, which makes the dough extensible and elastic. Pasta is an unleavened product; the dough, made of flour and water, does not ferment or rise. Dough is pressed and cut into noodles. Gluten makes the noodles hold their shapes. The noodles are cooked in boiling water. Fresh noodles may have to be cooked fairly soon; industially manufactured fresh pasta has become a refrigerated product available in grocery stores.
Dried
Dried pasta was developed by Italian manufacturers in the 19th century and the early 20th century. It is more durable than fresh pasta. It is made by mixing flour and water into dough, extruding the dough through dies, cutting it, moving it on conveyor belts to drying machine, drying it and packaging the dry noodles. The Wikipedia article pasta processing provides an overview. Whole wheat and gluten-free dried pasta products became available during the late 20th century. Dried pasta generally is made without salt and has very little sodium.
Dried pasta noodles vary: long, short, and shaped. Noodles gain weight and volume when cooked in water. Dried pasta of any given weight generally absorbs about the same amount of water as the same amount of differently shaped dried pasta. The Dry to Cooked Pasta Calculator: A Comprehensive Guide at the Lyn’s Kitchen site provides the amounts of gain, by volume, in tables. Four US ounces (112 g.) of dried elbow pasta (macaroni), a short pasta, which is one US cup by volume, yields 2.5 cups of cooked pasta. (The same amount, by weight, of dried long or shaped noodles yields different volumes of cooked pasta.) The tables at that site do not estimate the weight of the wet, drained, cooked pasta. The USDA tables, discussed below, suggest that the main difference between 100 g. of uncooked and cooked dried pasta is that cooked pasta has an additional 51 g. of water, suggesting that less than 50 g. of dried uncooked pasta gains over 50 g. during cooking.
The USDA FoodData Central data has nutritional information about some cooked pasta in the Survey Foods (FNDDS) and Legacy Foods (2018) databases. and states nutritional information for a stated volume (e.g. 1 cup) or weight (100 g.). The Legacy Foods data has separate entries for uncooked dried pasta and salted cooked pasta. Noted with respect to 100 g. of uncooked dried pasta or cooked pasta:
uncooked dried pasta contains about 9 to 9.9 g. water;
cooked pasta contains about 62 g. water;
dried pasta cooked without salt has 1 mg. of sodium; and
dried pasta cooked with salt has 131 mg. of sodium .
Culinary Advice
Recommended Practices
Many culinary sources discuss the best practices for cooking dried pasta: to drop dried pasta in boiling water and drain it when the pasta has been hydrated and cooked al dente (which may vary from the time specified by the manufacturer). The sources vary on the amount of water. The majority recommend a gallon of water (4 US quarts, or 16 US cups, by volume) for one pound (454 grams) of dried pasta. A pound of dried pasta is said by many culinary writers to be enough for four servings of cooked pasta. A US gallon of water weighs about 3,800 grams, and has a volume of 3.785 liters. A cook may decides to use less cooking water:
to cook less than 1 lb. of dried pasta, or
to use a recipe or method that uses less water for other reasons.
Low-salt and other health oriented cookbooks (e.g. The American Heart Association’s Low-Salt Cookbook) counsel against salting pasta water while most culinary sources advise the home cook to cook the pasta in salted water to make the pasta taste better. Older culinary sources say that pasta has been traditionally cooked in water “as salty as the sea” but modern sources dismiss that standard. Some sources also say salt slows the gelatinization of starch in the pasta and makes the pasta more firm. The majority of culinary sources recommend 1 Tablespoon (3 tsp.) or 4 teaspoons (of ordinary table salt – i.e. made of moderately fine crystals) in 1 gallon. A printed example: The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook, (1997) by Jack Bishop. Web sources:
1 Tablespoon of table salt weighs 17.1 grams. 1 Tbsp. of salt dissolved in water adds to the total weight of the cooking water by about .005. It contributes 6,720 mg. of sodium ions to 1 gallon cooking water. Some of the boiling cooking water evaporates, and some is absorbed by the pasta. There is a question about how much sodium dried pasta absorbs when cooked in salted water.
The America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Illustrated site, a culinary site, minimizes the sodium added by cooking dried pasta in salted water on the basis of “independent” testing. But, it did not say how the test was conducted and state the results:
Adding salt to pasta’s cooking water ensures that the pasta is flavorful. Throughout the years we’ve zeroed in on a preferred ratio of 1 tablespoon of table salt to 4 quarts of cooking water per pound of pasta for the most well-seasoned pasta of any shape or size.
Give or take a few milligrams of sodium, all the shapes absorbed about the same amount of salt: 1/16 teaspoon per 4-ounce serving or a total of 1/4 teaspoon per pound of pasta. … even if you are watching your sodium intake, the amount pasta actually absorbs is so small that it’s probably not an issue.
An article published on the culinary MarthaStewart.com web site suggested the amount of sodium added to pasta by cooking it in water with 1 Tablespoon of salt was minor:
Sodium patrollers can rest easy knowing that your pasta will not absorb the full tablespoon of salt. In fact, a pound of pasta is estimated to absorb only about a quarter of that amount.
The estimate of a quarter of a tablespoon of salt is not explained. This would be 4.3 grams, which would include nearly 1,700 mg. of sodium. This works out to 425 mg per serving, which is not alarming but is a significant amount for one course of one meal in a day.
Culinary Writing and Publishing
“Tastes better” is an opinion delivered as culinary advice.
The culinary sources above implied there is scientific evidence that cooking dried pasta in salted water does not present health concerns for consumers. The sources have failed to identify the experimental evidence or papers that anchor their opinions. If the writers, editors and publishers understood the heatlh risks, they might have said what they knew. The culinary publishing industry has not been giving advice based on food science or medical science.
The culinary sources suggest that cooking dried pasta in salted water does not add much sodium in terms of the US National Research Council’s Recommended Daily Allowances (“RDAs”). The RDA for sodium is 2,400 mg. (or 1,500 mg. for many individuals). The legal and regulatory context:
there is no law against sodium in cooked pasta or adding salt to dried pasta through the cooking water; but
sodium in cooked pasta or salt added to dried pasta through the cooking water is not “approved” or recommended by US authorities.
The RDA is not a government standard for sodium in food. U.S. public health guidance warns about sodium in prepared, processed and cooked food and requires disclosure of sodium by the manufacturer or seller of a packaged product in precise terms.
There is no law or regulation requiring a culinary writer to explain the consequences of following a tradition, a recipe or advice on cooking. There is no RDA for culinary advice from journalists.
Web Forum
A threaded discussion in the Seasoned Advice site (“a question and answer site for professional and amateur chefs”in the StackExchange network) of the question “When cooking pasta in salted water how much of the salt is absorbed” began in 2010. The discussion includes a couple of published scientific research papers, some theories, and a little math. The references in that discussion to scientific sources:
“Changes in Sodium Content in Potatoes, Pasta and Rice with Different Cooking Methods” a report written for the Scottish Food Standard Agency in 2006. The report is not in the publications of Food Standards Scotland in 2024. The report is in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, but that service often returns a 503 error – “no server available” – to requests. There is a copy in the USDA National Agricultural Library at https://www.nal.usda.gov/research-tools/food-safety-research-projects/change-sodium-content-potato-pasta-and-rice-different.
Science
Search
A search engine search can lead to the Seasoned Advice web forum discussion noted above. Finding other papers published in scientific journals about the salt in pasta cooking water with a search engine is not easy. Understanding or applying a paper is not easy. Food scientists writing for publication in academic journals do not explain the effects of cooking in the terms used in culinary writing. I located a paper that addresses, and seems to answer, the question, by searching the citation of the 1986 paper in Cereal Chemistry.
VTI Paper
There is a paper published in Food Chemistry in 2019: “Cooking parameters affect the sodium content of prepared pasta” (“VTI paper” – some of authors were at the Virginia Technical Institute at the time). It was based on experiments cooking one pound (454 g.) of dried spaghetti pasta, and other pasta samples in 6 quarts (1.5 gallons) of unsalted water, and salted water. The VTI experiments tested pasta made from wheat. Some pastas are made from rice or other gluten-free starch products. Some dried pasta products may have more sodium or take up more sodium from salted cooking water (as discussed in the 2006 report to the Scottish Standards Agency (noted above).
The VTI paper discusses cooking by a reference method (“Ref.” M.”): adding 36 g., 1the team used the conversion factor of 1 Tbsp = 18 g. 2 Tablespoons of table salt (Morton® iodized) to 6 quarts (1.5 gallons) tap water, bringing the salted cooking water to a boil, and cooking the pasta for 9 minutes. There were tests at several different concentrations of salt in water, listed in the table below. The team used a fixed amount of salt for a fixed amount of dried pasta in one control experiment. The VTI paper used the term “concentration of salt” of water (i.e. salinity, a specific mass concentration) in grams of salt in a liter of water (g/liter).
The VTI team did not test at the concentrations the culinary sources recommend, as such. These values are interpolated in the table below on the linear basis found in the paper (see below):
1 Tablespoon of table salt, 17.1 grams (some would say 18 g.); 4.52 g/liter.
4 teaspoons, 22.8 g.; 6.02 g/liter.
The VTI experiments tested for sodium in the cooked pasta:
Sodium was quantified using inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) after digesting the samples using a two-day, open vessel, nitric acid/hydrogen peroxide digestion procedure
The paper reported results by sodium in milligrams divided by the mass of the cooked pasta for 100 g. of cooked pasta and for 140 g. of cooked pasta. The paper correlates experiments and data by identifying the experiments with letters of alphabet. The results of experiments A, B, G, H, I, J can be listed in a table. the results and the interpolations are ranked in the ascending order of sodium in cooked pasta:
Test and salt
Salt g/liter
mg. sodium /100 g.
mg. sodium /140 g.
G – unsalted
0
≤5
≤5
B – 50% Ref. M.
3.17
91.2
128
H – Ref. M. & rinse pasta after cooking
6.34
115
162
Interpolation*: 1 Tbsp. /gallon
4.52
125.5 *
176.1 *
Interpolation*: 4 tsp. /gallon
6.02
167. 2 *
234.5 *
A – Ref. M.
6.34
176
247
I – 150% Ref. M
9.51
267
373
J – 2x Ref. M
12.7
350
490
The VTI paper noted:
…. Dry pasta is itself low in sodium, but significant and varying sodium content results from salt added during preparation. Reducing (or eliminating) the amount of salt added when cooking pasta and/or rinsing after cooking is a simple and quantitative way to reduce dietary sodium. The purpose of salt in cooking pasta is generally agreed upon to be for taste.
The VTI experimental results supported:
… a predictive equation for sodium in cooked pasta as a function of the salt concentration in the cooking water … based on differing amounts of salt added during pasta preparation, and whether or not the pasta was rinsed.
The connection between the concentration of salt in the cooking water and sodium in the prepared pasta was linear, i.e. it graphed as a straight diagonal line in graphs in the paper. The VTI paper suggested:
The linear relationship between the concentration of salt in the cooking water and sodium in the prepared pasta … can be used to obtain a more accurate estimate of the sodium content …
This information could also be communicated to consumers as demonstrable and simple way to reduce sodium intake, by relating how much salt in pasta cooking water increases sodium, and that rinsing after cooking could reduce by 1/3 the sodium content of pasta cooked in salted water
The Culinary Sources’ Advice
The VTI team did not test at concentrations that the culinary sources recommended – 1 Tbsp. or 4 tsp. of salt per gallon of water. The results suggest that the 1 Tbsp. would add about 125 mg. and 4 tsp. about 167 mg. of sodium to 100 g. of cooked pasta.
The culinary sources are justified in saying that salting a gallon of cooking water with 1 Tbsp. or 4 tsp of salt does not make the cooked pasta very salty, and in saying pasta cooked in water with salt at those concentrations adds sodium to the cooked pasta in amounts that can be calculated as in the table above. The sodium in 100 g. of cooked pasta is less than 200 mg. Then, think about the size of serving. A serving of cooked pasta may begin as 100 to 150 g. of dried pasta, which swells in volume and gains weight. That serving of pasta may weigh 200 to 300 g. when cooked in water and may contain 350 to 500 mg. of sodium if the water has been salted to the level recommended by culinary sources.
Public Health Guidance, Flavor and Appetite
The VTI paper helps understand how much sodium a person who eats pasta cooked in salted water consumes. The paper does not prove that it is “safe” to eat pasta cooking in salted water. The health effects depend on the person, the concentration of salt, the size of the serving, and other variables.
Science-based RDAs and label warnings are not much use in preventing cooks from cooking with salt. Cooks do not often:
weigh or measure salt or water,
know, let alone understand, the sodium or salt RDAs, or
weigh the portions of cooked pasta.
Cooks commonly serve much more pasta than 100 g., topped with a sodium-rich sauce (highly processed and/or made with salt), accompanied by sodium-rich food.
Milk, discussed in a Wikipedia entry, is the milk of dairy cows, processed. Fluid milk used in baking, by commercial bakers and home bakers, in Europe and America is mainly cows’ milk. Milk must be taken to a dairy plant to be processed within hours after being harvested in a dairy farm, and only lasts a few days, even with the benefit of refrigeration. Milk sold in retail outlets in North America has been pasteurized – as required by public heath law.
At one point in history, milk was obtained by human by milking cows by hand. Milk is still obtained from cows, but in modern times, the cows are cared for on dairy farms and milked with machines. Milk naturally separate into cream and milk. The high butterfat cream was, historically, churned manually to make butter. The leftover fluid, if the milk had not soured, was sweet traditional buttermilk. If the cream was churned from sour milk, the buttermilk was sour. Milk became sour due to bacteria in the milk, which started fermenting the milk.
A writer for Slate suggested in 2012:
“As long as people have made butter there’s been buttermilk,” says Anne Mendelson, a culinary historian and the author of Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages. Careful: Here, she’s talking about a byproduct of churning whole milk or cream—the thin, white liquid that [Laura Ingals] Wilder wrote about.
So how did that buttermilk, the original buttermilk, turn into the thick, sour, yogurty beverage I sampled … ? The confusion surrounding this drink dates back to the 18th century or before. Until the age of refrigeration, milk soured quickly in the kitchen, and most butter ended up being made from the slightly spoiled stuff. As a result, some historical sources use the word buttermilk … to describe the byproduct of butter-making; others use it to describe butter-making’s standard ingredient at the time—milk that had gone sour from sitting around too long. To make matters more confusing, the butter-byproduct kind of buttermilk could be either “sour,” if you started out with the off milk that was itself sometimes called buttermilk, or “sweet,” if you started out with fresh cream (like Laura’s mom did). So, prior to the 20th century, buttermilk could refer to at least three different categories of beverage: regular old milk that had gone sour; the sour byproduct of churning sour milk or cream into butter; and the “sweet” byproduct of churning fresh milk or cream into butter.
In industrial dairies, milk is refined by removing butterfat from whole milk with a centrifuge. The process is discussed in web pages other than Wikipedia. Some internet material on industrial dairy methods and science:
… the stuff known as cultured buttermilk at your local supermarket—i.e. milk that has been deliberately soured—is a 20th-century invention, and the product of a health-food diet craze dating back to the flapper era.
….
In Western Europe and America, the only people who bothered to drink buttermilk of any kind were the poor farmers and slaves who needed all the calories and nutrition they could get. Everyone else fed sour milk and butter-byproduct to their farm animals.
….
While farmers’ wives and other home cooks were using sour milk in their baked goods, America saw an influx of immigrants from parts of the world where sour milk was considered a refreshing everyday beverage. Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, who have a tendency toward lactose intolerance, may have been especially inclined to drink it, since the bacteria make it more digestible. The nonimmigrant American public was generally mistrustful of sour milk as a beverage until 1907, when [a] Russian biologist … concluded that the relative longevity enjoyed by people living in the Balkans was a direct result of their consumption of sour milk. Health-conscious Americans started going crazy for sour milk, thinking it would prevent aging. At his sanitarium in Battle Creek, Mich., holistic doctor and breakfast-cereal enthusiast John Harvey Kellogg began serving an ultra-tart, deliberately soured version with the catchy name “Bulgarian buttermilk.”
Naturally-occurring sour milk had in the mean time become increasingly rare, thanks to modern refrigeration. So commercial dairies, spotting an unfilled niche, began to culture it themselves, and sold the new product widely as buttermilk starting in the 1920s. This was much like the buttermilk we find in grocery stores today: Made from low-fat milk and lactic acid bacteria that grow best under moderate heat conditions. Dairies used low-fat milk because it was cheaper than whole milk, but still took on a thick, creamy body when cultured.
L.V. Anderson, in Slate, cited above
The milk solids remaining after milk is centrifuged include the cell membranes of the fat cells, casein (a protein) and lactose (a sugar). The casein reacts to acid to curdle milk.
Full butterfat milk – often marketed as Homogenized milk (all milk processed for retail has been homogenized) – is about 3.5 % butterfat. It depends on the cows, the fodder, and the dairy. Fluid milk processed for retail sale is sold as reduced butterfat milk by the percentage of butterfact -ie. 2%, 1%, or as skim milk, which as butterfat content at a fraction over 0%.
Buttermilk
Buttermilk, since the industrialization of dairies, has been a dairy product produced by processing fluid milk. Some fluid buttermilk is produced by fermenting partially skimmed milk. Dairies also produce acidified buttermilk – milk treated by mixing milk with an acid. A dairy may use fermentation or acidification or a combination of both. The production methods are not discussed on product labels or in an ordinary dairy’s promotional materials. Nor do bakers say how the buttermilk used to mix dough was made.
The home baker’s hack to make acidified buttermilk, comparable to store-bought dairy buttermilk is to add an acid, in the amounts noted here to one cup of milk:
1 Tablespoon lemon juice;
1 Tablespoon vinegar; or
1 teaspoon cream of tartar.
Available in Victoria BC.
Most retail grocers in Victoria sell pasteurized milk processed by the Island Farms dairy, which distributes a fermented and/or acidified buttermilk said to be about 1.5% butterfat. The weight of a “1 cup (250 ml.)”1A US cup is 236.59 ml. Most cookware manufacturers label 250 ml measuring cups as 1 cup. The people who write recipes mainly say “1 cup or 250 ml.” It usually does not make a difference. serving is not stated. Conventionally, a cup of buttermilk weighs 245 grams (compare a US cup of water at 237 g.).
Dry Milk
Dehydration
Dry milk (aka milk powder) is made by dehydrating milk – removing water. Dry milk can be made with whole milk, or reduced butterfat milk. It is reconstituted by adding water. Dry milk can be added to baking recipe or formula as a dry ingredient. Adding water (or milk) to dry ingredients and mixing the ingredients to make dough is a normal process in baking bread. Manufacturers can dehydrate whole milk, skim milk and buttermilk.
Buttermilk Powder
Buttermilk powder is dehydrated dairy cultured buttermilk, made from reduced butterfat milk. It is possible to substitute buttermilk powder and water or plain milk in a recipe (e.g. for pancakes, cakes or bread) for fluid buttermilk. One way is to mix the powder with water and use the reconstituted fluid as buttermilk. Another is to add the amount of powder that would make buttermilk with the water in the bread recipe.
Buttemilk powder can be purchased online from King Arthur Flour and other suppliers. The King Arthur Flour blog, discussing and promoting King Arthur Dried Buttermilk:
Use dried buttermilk as a substitute for the liquid buttermilk called for in your recipe. It’s simple as (buttermilk) pie: For every cup of liquid buttermilk, substitute 1/4 cup (30g) dried buttermilk plus 1 cup (227g) water (or milk). Don’t worry about reconstituting the powder by stirring it together with liquid: Simply mix dried buttermilk into your recipe at the same time you add the flour, and add the liquid when the recipe says to add the buttermilk.
….
Dried buttermilk yields results nearly identical to liquid, with just two small differences: Baked goods made with dried buttermilk are slightly lighter in color than those made with liquid cultured buttermilk, and their flavor is a bit richer — more creamy-buttery than tangy.
….
Another discovery: When replacing fresh buttermilk with dried, using milk in place of the water typically called for in this substitution gives baked goods even better texture and flavor, thanks to the additional milk solids, fats, and sugars.
As of 2024, retail grocers in Victoria BC have skim milk powder for sale. I have not seen whole milk powder or buttermilk powder on the grocery store shelves for years. I have been able to get buttermilk powder in a local outlet of the bulk foods chain Bulk Barn (which also sells full fat milk powder and skim milk powder). Bulk Barn uses a serving size of 100 g. of buttermilk powder for the Food Facts label. 100 mg. contains 517 mg. of sodium. Bulk Barn suggests 25 g. to make 1 cup of buttermilk. This can be scaled to 28 g. of powder in 1 ⅛ cups of water. These are normal liquid quantities in recipes for medium loaves, in bread machine terms.
Fluid dairy buttermilk, reconstituted buttermilk and buttermilk powder added as a bread ingredient before mixing all produce similiar loaves.
A “1 cup” serving of Island Farms buttermilk contains 270 mg of sodium. “1 cup” of buttermilk made with 25 g. of Bulk Barn Buttermilk powder (and 1 “cup”) of water contains just under 260 mg. of sodium.
Substitution for buttermilk powder
Some internet resources suggest that mixing cream of tartar with skim milk powder, produces a powder that can be substituted for buttermilk powder. I am skepical in the absence of a scientific explanation and test/experimental evidence:
Would adding cream of tartar (or one of the other acids) to a cup of reconstituted skim milk work – skim milk is very low in butterfat – make buttermilk that compares to dairy buttermilk; and
Doesn’t the cream of tartar, added as a powder to the dry dough ingredients (and not to the fluid milk) act like vinegar or other acids that relax dough – affecting the gluten and producing soft crumb.
I will modify and add to this post. (It is an endless post.)
Devices and Technological
Garmin Edge 130 elevations
My Garmin Edge 130 cycling computer which I used until 2024 was an “entry level” GPS device, no longer on the market, with a barometric altimeter. . The software was written several years ago , and has many glitches. Riders complained in forums. Garmin closed discussion on some complaints and issues.
One criticism: the rechargeable battery is soldered in, small and weak, and does not perform well if the ambient temperature is below 10℃.
Another is that the device is as small as a watch face or simple cycling computer in the fashion of many speed and distance computer.
The Garmin Edge 130 has data fields that allow a rider to display elevation, distance ascended, distance descended and grade. The manual says the “grade” data field displays:
“The calculation of rise (elevation) over run (distance). For example, if for every 3 m (10 ft.) you climb you travel 60 m (200 ft.), the grade is 5%”.
The barometer appears to read the surface elevation from point to point. The elevation field displays disparate readings for the same location on different rides depending on wind and the location of cells of high pressure. The calculations of total elevation gained or total descents vary for the same ride on different days. The software returned data sampled a few seconds and many meters earlier in the ride.
Garmin seems to correlate location data with elevation data from some maps. The head unit seems to supply a starting elevation for rides starting at known points. Information on how Garmin gets this data and programs the head units is proprietary.
Trying to read the device display is a distraction. Using Garmin programs and apps – for instance reviewing a ride track in Garmin Connect to get an elevation for a particular point on a trip is slow. Garmin Connect uses map data from Garmin’s “OpenStreetMaps” and displays a track on a map. It seems possible to place a cursor on a location and get the elevation. It was not a useful exercise.
Garmin Edge Explorer 2
The Edge Explorer 2 cycling computer has a altimeter; Garmin suggests it is barometric. It displays data fields for elevation, distance ascended, distance descended and grade. The manufacturer’s manual states:
Your device was already calibrated at the factory, and the device uses automatic calibration at your GPS starting point by default. You can manually calibrate the barometric altimeter if you know the correct elevation.
The reading of current elevation and grade do not lag. The calculations of total elevation gained or total descents are more consistent from ride to ride.
Google Earth Pro
The Google Earth Pro app, in Windows, on a desktop computer, can show location and elevation if you use the “Ruler” tool to draw a “path”. Google Earth will calculate and display “slope”, a % of distance along a path (“grade” in the language of Garmin). Finding a precise levation in Google Earth depends on:
the way the application was built to match maps and aerial photos to satellite and drone data for the devices and systems used to record the elevation of specific locations on the surface of the eath as map coordinates;
the accuracy of the maps and data the application searches; and
how screen magnification and the plotting of a path affect the way the program identifies map coordinates and retrieves the recorded elevation.
I draw a section in Google Earth with the ruler tool, very occasionally.
Smart Phone Apps (Android)
Several Android smartphone apps can locate the phone as a place on a map and provide an elevation. They vary in accuracy depending on factors involving the use of the smartphone sensors and the network connection including the cell phone network.
Any given elevation or altitude app may need device permissions to use a device’s location services. Some use cellular data. Some share data with third parties and decline to delete data. Many apps do not provide ride tracks to riders.
I occasionally stopped during a ride to use the Android App My Elevation (by RDH software) and logged readings in a notes-taking App.
Places
The table that follows list the approximate elevation of waypoints that I pass in riding from home. In the table that follows:
Areas are municipal divisions in Greater Victoria, and areas within large municipal areas (e.g. Victoria West in the City of Victoria).
Elevation data in the table is the elevation in meters, above mean sea level according to the My Elevation app on my smartphone. It sometimes varies from Google Earth Pro.
Area
Trail, Street, Route
Crossing or Point
Elevation
Esquimalt
Home, Local, indoors (basement)
18
Esquimalt
Home, Local street level
21
Esquimalt View Royal
Admirals Rd.
Craigflower
12
Esquimalt View Royal
E&N
View Royal Boundary (S end of Hallowell)
17
Esquimalt
E&N
CFB, Graving Dock entrance, Admirals Road at Colville
27
Esquimalt
E&B
Crossing Hutchison
23
Esquimalt
Rockheights Ave.
Highrock Ave. (high point in W. Esq. is 64 m.) Notes in narrative above.
37
Esquimalt
Esq. Rd.
Civic offices, library W of Fraser Avenue
30
Esquimalt
E&N
Lampson Street
19
Victoria Vic West
Goose
1 Km Sign end of Harbour, beginning of trail along the harbour
7
Victoria
Beacon Hill Ring Drive
Childrens’ Farm
25
Oak Bay Uplands
Upper Terrace
Cordova Bay Rd E end of Cedar Hill X
53
View Royal
Goose
Ridge West of West Tunnel, Helmcken; near Victoria General
30
View Royal
Goose
Atkins Avenue Transit park n ride lot Trail rest stop
Overpass of MacKenzie Avenue, east end along Douglas Street
21
Saanich
Lochside
Near 3 Km. post Rest stop, Don Mann
37
Saanich
Lochside
Royal Oak Drive at Lochside School
41
Saanich
Lochside
Near 9 Km. post Cordova Bay Road
36
Central Saanich
Hunt Valley: Welch
At Martindale
39
Central Saanich
Lochside
At 14 Km post i.e. Ocean View
26
Crossing Esquimalt N to S
A route on side streets is preferable to sharing the road with the heavy traffic on Admirals Road on the climb from Woodway to Esquimalt Road (average slope 4% over a distance of 350 m., with a 150 m section with slopes of 10% to 15.5%).
One option is to ride south along Hutchison from the E&N trail up to Rockheights and follow Rockheight past the intersection of Highrock Avenue. The elevation of the junction of Rockheights Avenue at Highrock Avenue is in the table above, I can draw a path in Google Earth from the E&N trail, along Hutchison and Rockheights to the intersection of Rockheights. The path is 514 meters long, from the low point of 17 m. above mean sea level on the E&N trail to a high point of 43 m., with a drop to 37 m. at the measurement point. The gain to the high point is 27 m. The average slope is 6.5 % . The slope goes to over 10% where Hutchison crosses Lockley. The slope goes from 10% to 15% for 150 meters. The slope gets shallower at Rockheights, but the climbing continues. The smaller chain ring on 2x drive trail system is useful.
Another is to turn south on Intervale, then west for a block on Lockley, then south up Intervale (it continues after the offset) and Highrock to Rockheights
Rockheights is gentle or level, and runs into Old Esquimalt which descends to Park Terrace, Grenville and Esquimalt Road.
Avoiding the climbs to travel from my Local CRD3 in NW Esquimalt to the library on Esquimalt Road in SW Esquimalt means riding north on the E&N trail and east of Lampson to a street that crosses Esquimalt Rd and gives access to the EW streets in the West Bay area.
