Category: Food

Slow Cookers

I used a slow cooker for many years, and invested time and effort in learning that method of cooking.

Slow cookers braise food in liquid at low heat. Most slow cookers made from the 1950s to the early 21st century used ceramic crocks heated by a single electric heating element- low powered and poorly insulated. Elements were like elements in electric ovens and toaster ovens: straight metal, shaped into a circle or oval to surround the lower part of crock. Elements in modern machines are ribbon or wire elements in a belt. In some modern machines the element may have insulation. In basic devices the power is turned on to allow a constant electric current produces constant heat stated as in watts. The element heats the crock which heats the food. The heat at the element will be greater than the temperature of the inside surface of the crock. The element may be contolled by a switch or a control panel.

The ceramic crock slow cooker was inspired by the ceramic beanpot. This article on CNET has pictures and illustrations of old devices. Ceramic beanpots, like Dutch ovens and casseroles, cook dry beans in water or broth. Beanpots involved long cooking times at low heat. The constraints for dry beans are heat and time. The heat source had to provide steady low heat, and keep the cooking water below the boiling point of water (212 F. or 100 C.). A slow cooker can be used like a beanpot, to cook beans in fluid. If heat is constantly applied, the beans will be heated, and simmered or gently boiled. Writers (e.g. Anupy Singla, The Indian Slow Cooker; Rick Bayless, Mexican Every Day) suggested several hours on high in a normal ceramic crock slow cooker. Some beans need a long time on high. e.g. chickpeas (garbanzo beans), black urad beans, or red kidney beans. Some recipes incorrectly suggest that dry chickpeas cook in 6 hours on low.

The ceramic crock slow cooker would cook root vegetables in a few hours; less dense material more quickly. Rival (now a Jarden Brand) began to build and market the Crock-Pot in the 1970’s (by the 1990’s “the Original Slow Cooker”) as a device to cook stew and chili. Rival and its competitors pushed the standard size of the crock from 5 quarts to 6 or 7 quarts. The manufacturers increased the wattage of elements to meet concerns that the device was not cooking the food well enough to be safe and palatable after 8 hours of cooking. Another innovation: the three and four position switch. With the latter the cook can select Off; Warm; Low; High. Warm is not a cooking setting. High means the element runs hotter than low. This article says that 7 hours on low is equivalent to 3 hours on high.

I used a 6 quart ceramic crock Crock-Pot with a manual off-low-high switch for years. It heated the ingredients enough: it created humidity under the lid and some bubbling in the pot; some ingredients would bake to the sides. I made stews and chilies that filled the pot to 2/3 to 3/4, cooked on low for 5-7 hours. I refrigerated or froze leftovers. The chilis I made were American chili con carne, a stew that may involve meat, beans, bell peppers, chili peppers, and vegetables. Mexican and Central American versions feature the flavour of chili peppers, and use beans. American versions often stress meat and minimize beans, but there are bean free and meatless recipes.

These slow cooker recipes require precooked or canned beans. Many slow cooker recipes for recommend using canned beans, because beans take long than any other ingredient. Most canned beans (most canned vegetables) are cooked in the can in a salty broth; salt is used to counteract the effects of this cooking – manufacturers think that without salt, the food takes on offensive flavours. This is a problem for many people – no sodium beans are available but consumers have to find them.

I tried a recipe with dry white chickpeas in that device once. The other ingredients were well cooked at 6 hours on low before but the beans were not done – rather crunchy. Chickpeas are said to need 3 hours or 4 hours on high in a crock pot or slow cooker. I haven’t tried that; I won’t. I am suspicious about recipes that say that chickpeas can be done in less than 10-12 hours. I have since done curried chickpeas (using a chana masala spice blend); cooking time of 14 hours on high.

In June 2015, Rival published a statement about Crock-Pots that can still be seen in the Wayback Machine archive here. It includes these assertions and disclaimers about cooking, food safety and slow cooker:

  • The simmering point of water is 209 F.;
  • The contents of a crock should reach that point in 7 to 8 hours on low or 3 to 4 hours on high;
  • Food doesn’t need to reach the boiling point for safe eating – the simmer point is acceptable;
  • The safe to serve internal temperature is around 160 degrees, which your food may reach well before three hours.
  • Just use your best discretion.

Rival did not say which ceramic crock slow cookers could bring food or fluid to 209 F. in under 3 hours on high or low setting. The simmering point of water usually refers to a range from 185 F. to 205 F. The water has thermal energy and bubbles slowly. A small amount of water turns to gas, condenses, and becomes visible as a mist. The water is not actually boiling and the mist is not steam, which is the gas made up of water molecules at a temperature in excess of the boiling point of water.

Simmered food should reach an equilibrium that is will be sustained for a time. The situation will change when heat is added to the system, too much evaporation has occurred, or the food is cooked.

The food safety aspect of cooking is to avoid the conditions in which bacteria contaminate the food. Bacteria are dead in frozen food, dormant in cold food, and die off at about 140 F. They thrive in cool to warm food. They digest the food and excrete complex chemicals that spoil or poison the food. Most cooking methods raise the temperature fast.

Books and recipes before 2016/17 assume 5.5-6 quart ceramic crock slow cookers with high and low cooking settings. Culinary writers try to get a stew, chili or curry done in 6 hours or less – fast slow cooking. Cook’s Illustrated/America’ Test Kitchen produced three America’s Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution cookbooks 2011-2015. Each discussed the uses and some of limitations of the device, and provided workable techniques and recipes – addressing the ceramic crock slower. Each book had product reviews of a few products. The products tended to work the same way.

Innovations extended product lines and marketing opportunities; some innovations added some value for consumers. Timers give cooks an option to turn off or turn down the heat. Jarden/Rival had a line of Smart-Cookers with buttons that allowed the user to select 4 or 6 hours on high, or 8 or 10 on low. These are not what a user may want. The Crock-Pot Count-Down timer was a good innovation and has been widely emulated.

The limitations of ceramic crock slow cookers include:

  • A 6 or 7 quart crock is heavy;
  • The crock could not sauté, fry, or roast food. Some ingredients have to be cooked in a skillet or other vessel first to ensure the dish would be fully cooked, or to enhance flavour (bloom spices, heat onions and garlic, brown some ingredients);
  • The ceramic crock cannot be used on stove elements, in hot ovens, or in microwave ovens;
  • Manufacturers and culinary writers warn users
    • to not lift the lid or stir the food;
    • to not add cold ingredients into a hot crock;
  • The food near the element gets hot first and is always hotter. Food touching the crock near the element may brown, stick or even burn;
  • Ceramic crocks develop cracks and break down. The heat source is in a belt around the lower part of the crock; recipes place variable demand on the device. Manufacturers deflect by blaming users for ignoring warnings and limit their liability to short warranty periods.
  • Replacement ceramic inserts are hard to find – out of production, or out of stock;
  • The device draws power constantly. It is cheaper and more efficient than using an oven, but not as efficient as other appliances.

Devices sold as slow cookers or having a slow cooker function, in 2019:

  • oval or round vessels with surrounding elements with ceramic cooking vessels or chambers;
  • oval or round vessels with surrounding or bottom elements, with metal, coated metal cooking vessels or chambers
  • round metal pots with bottom elements (electric pressure cookers and other multicookers).

Slow cooker sizes vary. There are many 3 and 4 quart devices. 5, 5.5, 6, 6.5 quart models were common – nearly standard. There have been a few 7.5 and 8 quart models. There are roasting pans/ovens in the shape and style of slow cookers – these are larger than slow cookers.

Some modern slow cookers have metal pans, with non-stick or ceramic coatings. Metal pan slow cookers may have the heating element in an aluminum hotplate below the pan – like rice cookers and electric pressure cookers. A rice cooker heats a metal pot of rice and fluid to a boil, and uses automated controls to change the heat to low simmer. An electric pressure cooker brings the contents of the pot to a rolling boil with a hotplate element (e.g. Instant Pots: 1000 watts in 6 quart pots). A pressure cooker heats food and fluid to the boiling point; under pressure the temperature rises higher. The elements in these devices are below at the cooking vessel, and temperature and pressure sensors are outside the inner pot.

Machines with high wattage elements and/or metal pots rely on temperature sensors and programmed controls to prevent the food from overheating. Temperature sensors are typically outside the cooking vessel, and read a temperature at a point on the outside surface. The chip makes progammed calculations that control the current and the read out/display, if any. Usually, the control chip turns the element off when a set temperature is reached, and turns it for short periods on maintain temperature at the point calculated by the manufacturer’s team. The temperature of the contents of the vessel over time should rise and then graph as peaks and troughs along a mean.

Cook’s Illustrated/America’ Test Kitchen The Complete Slow Cooker (2017) recommended modern slow cookers with features including temperature sensors, countdown timers and electronic controls. CI/ATK tested heating performance by heating 4 quarts of water in 6 and 7 quart slow cookers Parts of the tests and results are in a YouTube video and a background story. There is a graph which shows that several devices in their tests will heat the water to 210 F. on high heat in about three hours; other devices take longer. CI/ATK pointed out that many newer machines run too hot to execute the CI/ATK library of slow cooker recipes. They like devices that heat the food to nearly the boiling point in a few hours and stabilize the heat. CI/ATK highly recommended a 6 quart KitchenAid ceramic crock model with a 350 watt belt element, and a Cuisinart model with a coated aluminum pan and a 250 watt hotplate element.

Wattage does not necessarily predict results. A 200-250 watt element is not hot enough to to fry in a metal pot. It heats the food faster in a metal pot than a ceramic. Ceramic crock machines with lower wattage elements will not heat water to 210 F. in 3 hours on high. Crock-Pot has 370 watts for an 8 quart crock, 240 watts for 6 quart models and 210 watts for 4 quart models. These machines would execute most recipes within the parameters of the recipe books, with a little variation depending on the crock and the contents of the crock. A few hours at low may be enough for soup, stew and chili. Several hours at high will do dry beans.

Pots and Pans

The hypothesis of Catching Fire is that cooking food was a learned cultural practice that affected the physiological evolution of human beings. It used “external” energy to make eating and digesting food take less time and liberated people to get on with life.

Ceramic cooking vessels were the dominant technology in societies in which people had stable homes. They were/are heavy and might be fragile, as compared to metal. They were the dominant technology until metal could be mined, refined and worked at scale – economically accessible. The Romans had sophisticated ceramics – the decline of the Roman empire is marked in the archeological record by the decline of the quality of ceramics. Ceramic vessels have been regarded as primitive and superceded in most cultures and have hung on as a specialty method of cooking.

The metal cooking vessel was allowed food to be fried, roasted, boiled or braised. The combination of metal cooking vessels and reasonably safe and efficient stoves that created heat with electricity or fuel enabled people to work with raw ingredients and “staple” processed ingredients (e.g. rice, dried beans, flour) to cook. The kitchen stove in the 20th century, heated by electrical energy or gas, provided direct heat applied to base of the cooking vessel by elements or burners, and an oven. The top worked with metal vessels, primarily. The user had to set the energy level, monitor the time and temperature and work the food around the pan. It is better than cooking with wood or coal, but it required some skill and effort and used energy.

Cast iron was a dominant technology in 19th century Europe and America. Carbon steel became (and remains) was a popular material to make woks and karahis in Asia. Thick walled vessels were durable and managed to distribute heat evenly. Thin walled vessels were vulnerable to dents and dings, and could easily scorch food. Lighter and less expensive thin-walled, vessels dominated the markets in Europe and America for most of the 20th century. Technological innovations included stainless steel, clad (bonded layers of stainless steel surfaces over other metal that held and conducted heat) bases, multi-ply vessels, induction pans.

American and European tradition culinary writers favoured using heavy cast iron or steel pans to fry or roast to get the outer layers of some food to carmelize (brown), and using technique (e.g. deglazing) to get the carmelized matter out of the pan and into a sauce or gravy that would reach the plate. Enamel on iron and enamel on steel coatings make metal less prone to stick, more resitant to corrosion, and simplied maintenace and care. Bare iron had to be treated or seasoned. This was the folk wisdom of cooks, recited by culinary writers. Cast iron cookware was durable, which led to interest in restoring and using old cast iron ware. The modern manufacturers and culinary writers theorized, experimented and tested the principles of seasoning iron. The idea of seasoning by baking a coating of flaxseed oil became a dominant theory around 2010:

American writers favoured the large skillet to fry and sauté most food, and as shallow roasting pan – even as a substitute for a wok.

Teflon and other chemical non-stick coatings developed in mid to late 20th century had benefits and drawbacks. The coatings could be scratched during use or cleaning – the utensils have to be softer than the utensils that work with bare metal. Some coatings degrade if the pan is overheated, or under heavy use. Hard anodized aluminum is marketed as non-stick. There have been technical advances. True advances cannot be readily identified in the background noise of product marketing “reviews”.

A few pans and utensils and a stove will see most cooks through most tasks. A few specialty applicances can cook some food with less adjustment of stove temperatures and work over the stove. A flat bottom wok, with a durable non stick coating, is a versatile pan which can serve as a skillet, a deep sauté pan and a wok.

Dry Hard

Table of Contents

Botany, Agriculture, Markets

Botany

Dry beans are the dry ripe seeds of legumes, also known as pulses. Grain usually refers to the ripe seeds of cereal crops – grassy plants. Dry beans are grain within this definition, used in agriculture and commerce :

A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legumes.

Wikipedia entry “Grain”

Dry beans are legumes, Fabaceae s.l. (or Leguminosae), a “family” of plants as defined by the APG System (III), which includes 730 genera of plants. Most legumes cultivated for human consumption are classified as being in one of these genera:

  • genus Lens – lentils
  • genus Vicea (including the genera known once as Vigna and Faba) – vetches, lupins, broad beans
  • genus Cicer – chickpeas
  • genus Pisam – peas
  • genus Glycine – soybeans
  • genus Arachis – peanuts
  • genus Phaseolus – (Central and South) American beans

The next levels in modern botanical taxonomy are:

Plants have been moved from the original regions where plants evolved by “natural” processes and by human intervention. Some human interventions occurred before historical records were made. The fact that dry beans were grown, stored or consumed can be inferred from archaeological evidence. Some interventions are a matter of historical record. One such event is known, perhaps euphemistically, among historians as the Columbian exchange in the period of European colonization (from the 15th through the early 20th centuries). One effect of this trade is that American legumes in the genus and species Phaseolus vulgaris have been cultivated and consumed in parts or Eurasia for centuries. Some writers interpolated or speculated that some legumes – e.g. black-eyed peas (an ingredient in the “Southern” recipe for “Hoppin’ John”) – were introduced to the Southern US by African persons brought to the US as chattel slaves, or by slave traders, or by entrepreneurs?

Many records are not known to consumers, farmers and suppliers of seeds and dry bean commodities. Botanical names are not used to identify the products of farming, in the markets. Many dry beans are known by common names that refer to cultivars: cultivated varieties. Some legumes are cultigens: plants that have been deliberately altered or selected by humans, by means of genetic modification, graft-chimaeras, plant breeding, or wild or cultivated plant selection. These plants have commercial value in horticulture, agriculture and forestry

Commodities

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization refers to dry beans as dry grains, and counts 11 types of dry pulses. Split pulses are commonly called grams. Some whole pulses are called also called grams, depending on the source of information. Beans harvested fresh, such as the green bean(which is on variant of the species Phaseolus Vulgaris, are not considered to be dry pulses, Nor are soybeans. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization list of dry pulses:

  • dry beans,
  • dry broad beans,
  • dry peas,
  • chickpeas,
  • cow peas,
  • pigeon peas,
  • lentils,
  • bambara beans,
  • vetches,
  • lupins, and
  • pulses not elsewhere specified.

Lentils are variants of one or two of the species in Lens, an Asian plant that was known to the Romans and cultivated in European areas of the Roman Empire. Lentils have a flat, disk-like shape. In markets, lentil may be identified by the colour of the hull or the hulled grain (see the Lentil#Types section on the Wikipedia page):

  • Red lentils are processed by hulling and splitting brown lentils. Red lentils are called dal in the languages of Indian farmers, markets and cooks. Asian brown lentils are small. North American farmers grow larger varieties of brown lentils for processing. I am not sure that red lentils, also described as pink or salmon, are different from hulled brown lentils;
  • In the North American grocery market, large brown and green lentils grown in the USA and Canada, are common.
  • Black lentils.

Yellow split lentils are hulled split moong (mung) beans. Yellow split lentils can be cooked like other split lentils and are regarded as dal in the languages of Indian farmers, markets and cooks.

Broad beans, and faba (or fava) beans are vetches (Vicia faba); Lupini beans are lupins. Broad beans and lupins are the original Mediterranean and European dried beans. Peas are variants of Pisum sativa.

Chickpeas are Cicer arietinum. There are two or three cultivars:

  • White chickpeas (garbanzo bean; Egyptian pea; kabuli chana) have been grown, cooked and consumed around the Mediteannean and in Asia for a few millenia of recorded history.
  • Dark (black and green) chickpeas (bengal gram) have been cultivated in Southern Asia (India),since before recorded history.

Urad beans, (black gram) and moong (mung) beans (green gram) are beans, not lentils and varieties of Vigna mungo. Black urad beans, when hulled or split, are regarded as dal in Indian cooking. The whole beans, also, are cooked like dal – usually.

Cowpeas and black-eyed peas are beans, varieties of Vigna unguiculata.

Pigeon peas (red gram), are beans, classified as Cajanus cajan .

Many dry beans are variants of Phaseolus vulgraris. P. Vulgaris is a versatile species, evolved in the Americans. It includes green beans which are harvested fresh and brought to market fresh, or canned, or frozen. P. Vulgaris can grow as vines, or a bushes. P. Vulgaris vines were grown one of the three sisters grown and consumed by several North American First Nations (indigenous people). The dry bean P. Vulgaris variants used in Central and North American recipes include pinto, navy, Great Northern, white kidney, red kidney, cranberry and black turtle beans. Phaseoli were exported (Columbian exchange) to Europe and Asia within decades after European contact with South and Central America. White kidney beans and cranberry beans were adopted and adapted in Italian, Mediterranean, and European cooking and agriculture. White kidney beans are the Cannellini beans in Italian recipes. Descendants of the cranberry bean are known as Romano and Borlotti beans in Italian recipes. Red Kidney beans have become a north Indian food. Some sources recite old botanical taxonomy and refer to some Vicea dry beans evolved in Europe and Asia as Phaseolus.

Related Phaseolus plants:

Dal

In Indian cooking, dal refers to several dry legumes:

  • hulled or split legume seeds (pulses) – split peas, moong (mung) beans, red lentils.
  • whole grams: lentils, urad beans, mung beans, and pigeon peas.
  • split dark chickpeas and whole chickpeas, white or dark
  • red kidney beans.

In some Indian regions, red kidney beans are grown, processed, sold and/or cooked as Rajma. Red kidney beans are a varietal of Phaseolus vulgaris.

There are botanical and culinary differences between Asian urad beans (very small, hard black beans, botanically Vigna mungo) and medium small black turtle beans (botanically Phaseolus vulgaris.

An Indian cooking site explains and has images. Anupy Singla’s books explain the terms for whole, split and hulled legumes.

Appearance,
Processed. 		Modern
presentation
Saboot Masoor DalWhole, brown Lentils
Masoor Dal DuhliSplit & hulled.
Pink, red or salmon lentils		Processed brown lentils
Saboot Urad,
Black Dal		Whole black beansSmall whole urad beans. Asian
Urad Dal ChilkaSplit & hulled urad beans with hullsProcessed urad beans
Urad Dal DuhliSplit & hulled urad beans, cleaned;
White		Processed urad beans
Sabut Moong DalWhole green mung beans
Moong Dal ChilkaSplit & hulled mung beans;
Yellow		Processed Mung beans
Sabut toor dalWhole pigeon peas; red gra,
Toor dal, duhli toor dalSplit & hulled pigeon peas
Lobia, lobhhia; rongi; chawliWhole blackeyed peas (cowpeas)
Desi chanaWhole black or green chickpeas;
Chana dalSplit & hulled black chickpeas; bengal gram
Kabuli chanaWhole white chickpeas
RajmaRed Kidney beans

Cooking and Processing

Cooking dry legumes uses resources including time, labour and fuel or power. Canned beans are cooked to a point, canned, and cooked in the can at high temperature. Canned beans are high in sodium, except for some brands. After the food industry became able to present cooked or parcooked canned dry beans in the retail and restaurant supply markets, cooking dry beans meant heating and stirring for the majority of home cooks. Dry beans were or remained a culinary interest in the industrialized countries of Europe and America in the 2nd half of the 20th century:

  • Some recipes focused on traditional methods such as ceramic cooking vessels. Paula Wolfert and others writers who wrote about Mediterranean (southern Europe, the Aegean countries, the Levant and North Africa) cooking techniques almost unknown modern times. The fascination with travel fed culinary exploration. For instance Books by Yotam Ottolenghi in the early 21st century .
  • Works on central American cooking and south Asian cooking addressed the preparation of dry beans. Some discussed ceramics but most techniques involved metal cooking vessels.
  • Recipes were developed for vegetarians and vegans. Recipes were developed for slow cookers and pressure cookers; even microwave cooking. Anything that would braise or boil dry beans.

Dry pulses last years. Old pulses are drier and harder to cook. It is hard to tell when the beans were harvested – age is not easily judged from appearance.

Dry pulses have to be cooked in water. The cooking time depends on the seed, age, and cooking method. Many recipe books understate cooking time for some pulses. Dry beans can be soaked in water and cooked at the same time by simmering for a long time, soaked separately, or soaked and cooked fast and hot.

Clay pot cooking was used in many cultures – ceramics predated metal cooking vessels. The word olla is Spanish, based on Latin; the Romans had good pottery. After the decline of the Roman empire, the olla – the bulbous cooking pot – was the common ceramic vessel. Paula Wolfert wrote, in the late 20th century about cooking in ceramic pots. Rick Bayless wrote about ceramic beanpots in several books about Central American (Mexican) cooking, in the late 20th century. Mexican and Central American cooks simmered pinto beans and black (turtle) beans in an olla in enough water to keep the beans covered in water through the entire process. With this method, the beans were not soaked or pre-cooked. According to Rick Bayless writing in Mexico, One Plate at a Time (Scribner, 2000), at p. 192, cooking in an olla heated the beans and water to 205-210 degrees (F). The beans would be cooked for several hours. Little water was lost to evaporation. The beans absorbed much of the water, and the remaining water became a broth. Some of the constraints on this method and device were starting early enough to get the beans cooked by meal time, using enough water, and keeping the heat low and steady.

Stoves and ovens became the preferred approach where hot stoves were workable, including Europe and North America. Stovetop elements and burners heat the contents of metal pots above the boiling point of water, even at the lowest settings. With stoves, metal pots and cheap energy or fuel, the prevalent approach became to soak and boil.

A ceramic or metal beanpot or casserole (e.g. a Dutch Oven) filled with beans and water can be put in an oven set as low as 250 F. to simmer the beans slowly; many recipes suggest a hotter oven. The constraints on slow simmering and baking are starting early enough to get the beans cooked by meal time, using enough water, keeping the heat steady and limiting the escape of steam from the pot.

The 20th century traditional slow cooker gets the beans and water hot enough to simmer. Slow cooker times dependent on the device, and the amount of beans and water, are often unreliable. Some dry beans – mainly small split lentils – will cook in a slow cooker in few hours on the traditional low setting without soaking.

Rick Bayless agreed in Mexican Everyday (2005) that a slow cooker was a method of cooking pinto beans, black turtle beans and some other phaseolus beans – without soaking. His recipes use 6 hours on the traditional high setting – which is normally calibrated below 205 degrees Celsius (simmering not boiling). Other slow cooker approaches work with “low” slow cooker setting without soaking:

  • Black turtle beans can be done in 6 hours;
  • Pinto beans take up to about 8 hours.

Many dry pulses require hours on the high slow cooker setting: urad beans, even when the pulses have been soaked: rajma (red kidney beans) and chana dal (chickpeas).

A pressure multi-cooker – i.e. an electric pressure cooker (e.g. Instant Pot) with a slow cooker program does not work like a traditional slow cooker. Not all pressure multi-cooker models reach and maintain the expected or optimal slow cooking temperature. Multi-cookers may (e.g. Instant Pots) refer to the “low” slow cooker cooking temperature as “medium” and use the term “low” for a “keep warm” setting.

A pressure cooker will cook dry pulses. Modern pressure cooking cookbooks and resources have trust-worthy suggested times.

Soaking before cooking reduces the cooking time for dry beans. It depends on the seed coat (hull), size and the cellular structures of the bean. Soaking is often assumed or overlooked in recipes and discussions. Some recipes, as noted above, omit soaking. There are variations on soaking:

  • long-soaking in at ambient (room) temperature,
  • quick-soaking in boiling water; Some recipes cook dry beans for a short time in boiling water before baking them’
  • soaking in brine,
  • adding baking soda to the cooking water.

Some recipes for some pulses aim to break the pulse down to a sauce, soup or gruel. Some will call for mashing a few cooked beans to thicken the sauce. Many aim to get the beans soft, but whole.

Bread Machine Artisan Bread?

Reasons a bread machine cannot be used, in the baking programs, to bake artisan bread:

  1. Gluten. The autolyze (a rest after mixing before kneading) and other rests during kneading allows gluten to form in a less structured way that produces the more open crumb of French bread and artisan loaves.
  2. Fermentation. Artisan loaves involve pre-ferments, delayed or cool fermentation, or bacterial fermentation for flavour. A pre-ferment or started (sponge, biga, poolish, pre-ferment, pate fermentee, sourdough, mother, chef, levain) introduces yeast or bacteria and enhances flavour.This also contributes to the irregular crumb.
  3. Shapes. A bread machine bakes in a pan. Rustic, country hearth loaves are shaped as round boules or oval batards (or torpedos), and baked on a deck, without a pan.
  4. Heat. Artisan loaves tend to have firm or even crisp/crunchy crusts. There is no direct temperature control or temperature reading on a bread machine.  A bread machine creates enough heat to bake a dark crust but cannot reach the temperature that bakes crunchy crusts

A bread machine can become a mixer (and a proofing box) on a dough cycle. A dough cycle will have an initial rest or preheat phase many machines (e.g. my Panasonic SD-YD250 had it on all dough cycles except pizza dough). Every machine will reliably mix the ingredients at a slow speed and move up to higher speed to work the dough.  There is some control of time.  For instance to avoid the more intensive mixing – just stop it when it is mixed.  And a pause after slow mixing can be made (to autolyse before more intensive mixing, or to add something), until the end of the phase. A few machines have a pause function, controlled by a button.  Most machines have a power interrupt that restarts the machine at the point in the cycle it stopped after short power outage.  This allows a pause of several minutes by unplugging the machine. The machine must be plugged back in, within the time limit or it goes back to the start of the cycle. There are no options to slow down the mixing or change the time – just stop when you want to stop mixing, and rest or work the the dough.

Dough cycles have a rest phase and a rise phase allowing the dough to ferment in machine, and stop.  The user has options after on when to remove the dough after mixing, and other options:

  • the end of mixing
  • the end of the rise
  • after the end of the cycle for added bulk fermentation time
  • put the dough in the fridge to slow down fermentation
  • knock it down, knead by hand;
  • additional fermentation – a second rise before shaping the loaf

The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (pp. 196-297) offers advice and several recipes/formulas for artisan loaves, using the dough cycle to mix.  At some points, the machine must be paused to prolong the ferment. Many machines can’t be paused, or only paused for short periods. A user may have to stop a machine after mixing and some kneading and set aside the dough and continue kneading after a long delay. A bread machine does not have a continue kneading program. A user will need to deal with additional kneading. shaping, benching and baking in an oven.

Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook has a recipe for French whole wheat artisan loaf using a dough program at p. 206. I used {Whole Wheat} Dough program. BLBMC advises a knock down, additional fermentation/rise after the dough cycle.  The steps after the dough is out of the machi3ne are shaping a torpedo loaf, final proof, scoring the loaf and baking at 400 F for 32-48 minutes:

  • 347 g. (2.5 cups) whole wheat flour
  • .5 cup spelt flour
  • {4.3 g. (.75 tsp)} salt [BLBMC 1.5 tsp]
  • {3.1 g. (1 tsp)} instant yeast [BLBMC 4 tsp]
  • 1 5/16 cups (1.25 + 1 tbsp) buttermilk
  • .5 cup water

The loaf looks like a loaf of rye bread – it has a dark crust.  The crust is soft, as might be expected with whole wheat.  It has a sticky crumb that leaves a residue on the bread knife, like an artisan OEM product sold in the local Thifty’s over the last two years before fall 2018.  The crumb is not as darkly coloured as 100%  whole wheat recipes which use dark brown sugar or molasses and oil – and not as dense.

Steamed Rice

Steamed rice is rice cooked in water. Cooked rice can used in a dish, as an accompaniment to other dishes, fried or processed further, or added to other dishes e.g. Nasi Goreng is preparation of fried cooked white rice. All rice delivers carbohydrates, a source of glucose, an essential nutrient.

White rice has been milled to remove the husk or bran and germ, leaving the white kernel of endosperm with the carbs. White rice can be cooked quickly, saving time and fuel/energy. Brown or whole rice has been dried, but the bran has been left. It is heat treated to delay the oils in the bran turning the rice rancid. Brown rice has more micronutrients and fiber than white rice.  Roger Owen, in his essay “A Rice Landscape”, published in Sri Owen’s The Rice Book (1993) wrote: “… brown rice always costs more because there is less demand for it, and because the bran … milled off … would have been sold separately.” The demand for brown rice has increased because it has become perceived as a healthy whole food, and because restaurant chefs and food writers have developed palatable preparations.

Steamed rice is not fried first (as with some pilaf, biryani, Mexican styles). It is not cooked as a risotto, paella, rice pudding, congee or other flavoured rice dish. Salt is optional; it is added for taste. Steamed rice can be cooked in a pot or cooking vessel over a heat source, or in a rice cooker appliance. Pressure cookers and pressure multi-cooker appliances (most multi-cookers are basically electric pressure cookers – e.g. Instant Pot) can do steamed rice. The slow cooker can cook rice in a soup or stew. It does not do well with plain rice where the goal is fluffy grains.

Rinsing white rice removes the fine rice talc that makes the cooked rice sticky. Rinsing is the correct preparation for white Basmati and long grain white rice, where the grains should be cooked but not sticky. This editors and authors of Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen announced this as concept 30 in The Science of Good Cooking (2012): “Rinsing (Not Soaking) Makes Rice Fluffy). Cooks have done this for centuries without the imprimatur of ATK. Rinsing is normal for white basmati but uncommon with long grain white rice grown in the Southern USA, and with short grain rices. Rinsing is not useful for short grain rice that is supposed to be creamy (for risotto) or sticky (for sushi and other Asian dishes). Or with with Spanish Bomba or other paella varieties. ATK suggests soaking the rice before cooking makes rice soggy or sticky. It depends on the ratio of water to wet rice that is being cooked, and the method and tools used by the cook. It is a step followed in many recipes.

Steaming is an absorption preparation.  Sri Owen, in The Rice Book (1993), said that steaming rice in a vessel on a heat source should be seen as a 2 step process.  First, rice is simmered in a water in an uncovered pot at the boiling point until the rice has absorbed the water. The second step is “finishing”. All methods depend on measurement of rice and water. Owen describes 4 ways:

  1. Cover the vessel and leaving it on very low heat to steam the rice internally, taking it off the heat and leaving it covered;
  2. Moving the rice into a vessel such as collander and steaming the rice suspended over boiling water.   This is the method recommended by Jamie Oliver;
  3. Moving the rice into a casserole, covering it and baking in an oven;
  4. Moving the rice into a microwaving vessel, covering with the usual wrap or cover, and a few minutes in a microwave oven.

Also, it is possible to put rice in ample boiling water and strain it like pasta. Some cookbooks promote this; many suggest this as an option among other methods.

A conventional method of steaming rice is a version of process 1 above. The rice (dry or rinsed or soaked) is added to boiling water and the temperature is lowered to a simmer, and the pot covered tightly:

  • Put the measured amount of rice in the measured amount of water and bring the water to a boil,  or add rice to boiling water and wait for the water to heat back up to a simmer,
  • Reduce the heat to a simmer. Cover the pot, leave it covered and set a timer.
  • Remove from heat and rest off heat, covered for 10-15 minutes. Set the timer for the final rest.

This works best when the temperature is brought down at the right moment. It requires a pot that disperses the heat evenly, a tight lid to hold in the steam, and control of heat and time. The recipes for this technique emphasize a tight lid on the pot and other techniques to limit evaporation. The method works within a range of rice/water ratios and times. The results may be more or less fluffy, absorbent or sticky. 

Package directions for the standard varieties go high on water; many recipes do. This will lead to soggy overcooked rice. The rice recipe at What’s Cooking America has a table of rice to water ratio and cooking times for several kinds of rice. The instructions at that site for cooking white rice are a bit contradictory.  There is a concise article by Fine Cooking magazine and some videos and notes at the Kitchn site. The normally stated ratios of long grain white rice to water is 1 cup of dry rice to 1.5 to 1.75  cups of water:

  • CI/ATK recommends the low end of this range, 3 cups of water for 2 cups of rinsed white long grain rice;
  • Sri Owen recommends 2 1/2 cups water to 2 cups of white rice;
  • Jill Nussenow, the Veggie Queen, suggests 1.5 cups of water for the first cup of rice, 1.25 cups of water for the second cup of rice – which means 2.75 cups of water for two cups of rice. Some of her recipes are for use in a pressure cooker, but this approach works with stovetop cooking.

The cooking time for white rice in a stovetop pan can be from 12 to 20 minutes. It depends on the stove, the heat, the pot, the rice, evaporation.

White Basmati rice, a long grain aromatic rice originating from Northern India, Pakistan and Nepal can be cooked by the slow simmer method. Refer to: article from the Guardian; Madhur Jaffry recipe from the Telegraph. I like the rice fluffy and go light on the water. 1.5 cups of water to 1 cup of rice is too much water for Basmati rice. Ratios and times for steel pot with a clad disc base:

  • 2.33 cups of water to 2 cups of rice, simmering 23 minutes, or
  • 2 cups of water to 1.5 cups of rice, simmering 20 minutes . 

Package directions for brown rice tend to suggest 2 1/2 cups of water to 1 cup of rice. Many recipes suggest 2 cups of water to one cup of brown rice:

  • CI/ATK suggests 1.5 cups of rice in 2.33 cups of water.
  • Sri Owen suggests that white and brown rice should have the same amount of water for some techniques.

Steaming brown rice takes a longer cooking time – 40 minutes or so in a rice cooker or in a pot on a stove.

An Instant Pot or other pressure multi-cooker, or any pressure cooker can save time and energy and produce good results with white rice using the rice program and with brown rice using the pressure cooker program. The pressure cooker is not faster but with steps controlled by timers and sensors is more convenient. The rice/water ratio ican be the same as for a stovetop device, or a little less water on the basis that there may be less evaporation.

Yeast measurement for bread machines

Table of Contents

Yeast for a Panasonic machine

Low salt

I had tried, with the machine I had before the Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine (acquired in 2016), to use less salt than the recipe says. For a reduction of salt by 50%, I followed the rule of thumb of reducing salt and yeast equally by weight. For low sodium I cut yeast in equal proportions by weight1This is a rule of thumb which has be adjusted based on the recipe and the machine, according to experience!. The principle is to reduce yeast by the same percentage as salt as suggested in The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (“BLBMC“) at p. 290 and by the May 2016 post on the Please Don’t Pass the Salt bread page. 

I used 50% of salt and 50% of the instant yeast for SAF instant yeast in a BLBMC recipe. If the recipe says 1.5 tsp salt, as many recipes did, I calculated salt by weight as 1.5 x 5.7 g. = 8.6 g, and I used 4.3 grams salt. If the recipe said 2 tsp. instant yeast, as many recipes did, which weighs 6.2 g. I would use 3.1 g.

There has to be a lower limit to this method – all bread needs some yeast or leavening to rise.

Problem

When I started to bake in the Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine, I had a problem. Medium loaves (1.5 lb.), both low sodium and regular recipe, based on the BLBMC filled the  pan, and had airy, weak crumb; some ballooned or cratered/collapsed/imploded. The fermentation was excessive for the amount of dough

Panasonic Manual Recipes

Panasonic’s recipes (in the manual; see its online recipe resource pages) call for 3.1 g. instant yeast (1 tsp.) to 417 g total flour weight for a medium (1.5 lb.) loaf; in baker percentage 0.7%. This is half the amount of yeast for loaves that size in BLBMC recipes:

  • 1 tsp (instead of 2 tsp or more ) for 3 cups of flour for a medium loaf;
  • 1.5 tsp. for 4.375 cups of flour for extra large loaves.

Another clue – the Panasonic SD-YD250 will bake an extra large (2.5 lb) loaf that may take more than 4 cups of flour but the yeast dispenser does not hold much more that a tablespoon. And an observation – set for medium loaves, basic bake and whole wheat cycles, the Panasonic SD-YD250 mixes for 3 minutes, kneads and rests to rise before baking. The knead time of 20-30 minutes is a little longer than for many machines. The rise phase is 2 hours, more or less, depending on the size of the loaf. The rise is longer by about 25-30 minutes than the rise in other machines.

Bread baked in the Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine does not need as much yeast as recipes from sources other than the Panasonic manual. The main differences between the Panasonic and machine and older bread machines are:

  • Gluten formation, and
  • Fermentation:
    • longer “rise” periods,
    • programmed heating during fermentation periods – the baking pan is warmed by the element, turning the baking space into a warm proofing box.

The long rise in a warm space allows the yeast to produce more gas. A small amount of yeast, given time and good conditions, leavens more dough,

Less yeast

I was able to use BLBMC formulas for white, whole wheat, and multigrain formulas requiring 2 tsp. instant yeast (6.2 g.) for a medium loaf (a formula with 3 cups or 15 oz. flour +/- by weight) by adjusting the yeast to 1 tsp. (3.12 g.). This produced loaves that were properly inflated.

This adjustment works for almost any recipe not specifically written for a Panasonic machine:

  • (BLBMC formulas have different amounts of SAF instant yeast and “bread machine yeast”. Ignore the amount of “bread machine yeast” in a BLBMC formula and use the amount for SAF instant yeast);
  • Weigh the yeast and salt; know the correct conversion factors:
    • 1 tsp of instant yeast weighs 3.12 or 3.15 grams, and
    • A recipe refers to conventionally ground table salt; 1 tsp weighs 5.7 grams;

I note the BLBMC/recipe amount of instant yeast. I calculate a “Panasonic” adjustment by halving the yeast stated in the BLBMC. For my Panasonic, this became the amount of yeast for the recipe. This reduction prevented the overflow/balloon problem and mixed dough that baked into bread. I did not change salt from the recipe in testing this adjustment in yeast.

I was not able to determine that 50% is absolutely the right conversion factor. It leavened the dough and prevented the ballooning loaves.

Other machines

Bread machines differ. Recipes for bread machine loaves cannot necessarily be used in different machines without making adjustments.

Salt and Yeast

I continued to bake with 50% of the salt in a recipe. As noted, my approach had been to halve both salt and yeast.

Where I had cut yeast to the low instant Panasonic number, I would cut this again to match the salt reduction. This meant I would use only 25% of the BLBMC or recipe yeast to bake 50% salt bread in the Panasonic. This worked cutting salt and cutting yeast that much, but began to affect results.

The rule of cutting yeast for the machine and cutting again by half when I reduce salt by half works reasonably well if I leave more than 1.4 g (half a teaspoon) of instant yeast for 3 cups of bread flour. If I cut salt more, I will have experiment to find the amount of instant yeast that will ferment and make a dough that flows and rises. I will have to adjust yeast differently when I eventually replace the Panasonic machine.

Panasonic SD-YD250 Bread Machine

I bought a Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine in 2016. After some setbacks, I put it aside. I came back to it and spent time troubleshooting the main problem: the right amount of yeast for bread in this machine.

Reviews at Everyday Sandwich and Make Bread at Home describe and illustrate this machine.  Like other Panasonic 2.5 lb loaf machines, the SD-RD250 and the SD-YR2500, it has loaf size settings for medium (1.5 lb), large (2 lb) and extra large (2.5 lb) loaves baked in a tall vertical rectangle pan. It does not have a setting for small (1 lb.) loaves. Medium and large loaves are shaped like tall loaves baked in loaf pans. Extra large loaves are long when laid down, and relatively wide and tall, compared to other loaf shapes.

The lid does not have a viewing window. Unlike most bread machines, it has a yeast dispenser. The dispenser has drawbacks. The dropper – a little button – has to be jiggled to make sure it is seated before filling the compartment. The yeast dispenser is not an essential feature. Users can keep yeast away from the water before the mixing phase in a machine which takes dry ingredients first (at the bottom of the pan) is to put yeast first, before the flour.

The SD-YD250 can bake daily or sandwich bread,with white flour or whole wheat. Also, loaves made with specialty varieties of wheat, (e.g. spelt). It can bake loaves with other flour or meal added to wheat flour (e.g. light rye – a mixture of white flour and rye flour, although manufacturer deprecates using rye flour).

The pan coating releases the loaf easily at the end of the bake cycle but the paddle stays on the shaft in the pan. (Removing the paddle from the pan can be done immediately with an oven mitt, or after the pan cools after taking the loaf from pan.  It works better before the bits of crumb around the end of the shaft dry out and bond the paddle to the shaft.)

The inside measurements of the pan are 19 cm (7.5 inches) long by 14 cm (5.5 inches) wide in the pan’s normal operating configuration when it is vertical. Any loaf will be or should be 19 cm x 14 cm.   The pan is 14.5 cm (5.7 inches) bottom to top. In a Panasonic extra large pan, a 2.5 lb. recipe of 4.4 cups of flour and about 2 cups of liquid would bake a loaf over 14.5 cm “long”, 19 cm “high”, and 14 cm “wide”.

The instruction book recommends dry ingredients be loaded first.

There are two kinds of program, bake and dough.  The dough process has three phases; a bake cycle has the fourth one:

  • (Initial) Rest – the ingredients come to a common temperature. The heating element, as far as I can tell is used for short intervals but not enough to heat the outside of the machine;
  • Knead – a two part phase. 1. Mix the ingredients together, hydrates the flour; 2. Knead to work the proteins in the flour into gluten;
  • Rise – fermentation. 2 hours in basic bake. The heating element is deployed to keep yeast at a good temperature (the dough may heat up on its own) on a cooler day. The mixer drive is deployed for knockdowns in this phase;
  • Bake – the heating element bakes the bread.

It has basic and whole wheat programs. The basic and whole wheat bake programs have variations – basic, sandwich, rapid, and raisin. In the bake programs, there is a setting for loaf size, M, L, or XL. This affects the length of knead and rise phases.

There are no notable differences between the basic bake and bake sandwich programs, or the whole wheat bake, whole wheat sandwich bake, and multi-grain bake programs. There are no differences between the whole wheat dough and multi-grain dough programs. The raisin programs are the same as the bake and dough programs, with an added warning sound when raisins can be added to the dough. Other programs:

  • a rapid dough program called pizza.
  • a program called bake only.
  • a French Bread program. This provides a longer rise in dough and bake modes, and a longer bake time. There is no loaf size selection; the recipe in the manual for the bake mode has three cups of flour, (which would make dough for a medium 1 ½ lb. bread machine loaf) but produces a loaf that fills the XL pan.

It does not have an identified gluten-free program. There is no program to mix and make bread leavened with other methods (e.g.. baking powder). Breads that are mixed but not kneaded can be mixed outside the machine, and baked in the bake-only program. It does not have customizeable settings or custom programs.

It has a delay timer that can be programmed to finish (and start) at a time up to 13 hours after loading and starting the machine.

A medium loaf in the basic bake program has about 3 cups of flour and 1.25 cups of water or fluid. Dough for a loaf this size, hydrated at 71,  could be baked in a 1.5 pound bread pan (about 2,600 cubic centimeters) – perhaps filling it. A 1.5 pound conventional oven pan is 25 cm (10 inches) long, 13 cm (5 inches) wide and (about) 8 cm deep.

With white flour in the basic bake program, the height of  medium loaf from the bottom of the pan to top of the loaf at the wall of the pan would be around 75% of the height of the extra large pan: about 9 cm at the side of the pan. To the top of the domed top of the loaf, 11-12 cm is reasonable; more is tall.  Height changes with:

  • type of flour (e.g. rye flour does not rise as well as wheat flour); or a small change in the amount of flour (1/4 cup), water, salt or yeast; or
  • cycle, e.g. French Bake – the bread rises and is less dense – more space for the same mass.

The motor has two speeds: off and on.  Mixing involves turning the power on and off in short intervals.  Mixing, for a medium loaf, on any cycle, is under 5 minutes:

  • 30 seconds – 40 pulses: 1/2 second on, 1/4 second off;
  • 120 seconds – 120 pulses: 3/4 quarter second on, 1/4 second off;
  • 30 seconds on;
  • The yeast dispenser drops yeast;
  • 35 second pause.
  • 60 seconds – 10 pulses: 4 seconds on, 2 seconds off.

The mixing forms a ball of dough centered on the paddle.

To knead dough, the machine pushes it around the pan. The dough sticks to the sides of the pan, and is stretched until it snaps away. This is similiar to the operation of a stand mixer, with pauses. This involves longer intervals with the motor on.

This machine has a long rise. The manual does not indicate that the heater warms the pan while the dough is “rising” (either primarary fermentation or secondary/proofing) but there may be some heat to aid the dough to rise.

The devices uses the motor for short intervals twice to deflate(knock down) the dough. In basic bake there are 2 sets of about 15 slow turns  at – 2:00 and – 1:40 on the countdown timer. After the second knock down (50 minutes before baking phase)  the dough should relax and flow to fill the bottom of the pan and rise again. In the first part of the bake phase, the dough should spring. A tenacious dough holds its ball shape for a long time. It may gather at one end of the pan.  The result is that the top of the baked loaf slopes. This happens with some dough in this kind of pan.  There is a hydration zone.  A tenacious dough may not flow.  A wet dough may balloon or collapse.

It supports low sodium baking, as any bread machine does. If the salt is reduced, the yeast should be reduced by the same proportion.

This Panasonic model uses less yeast than machines by other brands. It kneads hard and gives the dough a long rise, with a bit of heat to keep the dough at the right temperature to ferment. It deflates the dough softly in short knock-downs. It needs only about half as much yeast as other machines. This means, with many or most recipes, for 50% sodium, I am using half the salt and one quarter of the yeast.

Bread Machines

Table of Contents

Introduction

Purpose

Bread machines came on the market about 1986, and became popular outside Japan by the late 1990s.  My first bread machine was a Black & Decker B1561. I replaced it with a Panasonic  SD-YD250 in 2016, and a Zojirushi Virtuoso (the 2016 model, the BB-PAC20) in 2020 [Updated].

A bread machine is a labour saving tool. A bread machine makes one unsliced loaf at a time. Bread machine bread will have a dense uniform crumb that is strong enough be sliced. The crust will be firm but not crisp. Lacking preservatives, bread machine bread may become stale or grow mould after a few days.

Bread machines process milled grain flour with water, salt, yeast or another leavener, and other ingredients to produce the processed food “bread” – yhey bake bread. They start with processed or plain ingredients. Bread machines use standard bakers’ supplies – flour, fluids, sugar, salt, rising agent (yeast or chemical), seeds, herbs, fruit, nuts etc. They mix the ingredients, process dough and bake dough until the dough becomes a baked product.

A bread machine has a heating element, a motor, a removable pan mounted to the frame, a paddle shaped mixing device (it may be called a dough hook or kneader) connected to the power train by a shaft in sealed bearings at the bottom of the pan. Machines may be used 2 or three times a week for several years. Modern machines have durable no-stick coatings. The pan is a mixing bowl and a baking pan. The size of the pan determines the maximum or optimal amount of ingredients to avoid a loaf that overflows the pan. It is possible to bake loaves that are smaller than the space available inside a bread machine pan, but it takes some planning.

Expectations

Bread machines follow the series of steps followed by professional bakers and home cooks. The designer can program combinations of steps that should produce results with some combinations of ingredients if the machine is loaded properly. The ingredients are mixed and kneaded. The machine has to wait while the dough rises, and then bake the dough into bread. Each step takes time. Manufacturers try to speed up the process by processing the dough differently or adding more rising agent to increase the speed and magnitude of the rise of the dough.

Bread machines are not all the same. Web sites may say that they all work the same way. Beth Hensperger tried to write recipes that worked well in all bread machines in

  • Robotic Kneads, a chapter in The Bread Bible: Beth Hensperger’s 300 Favourite Recipes (1999), and
  • The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (2000),

A bread machine can produce enriched (sandwich) bread similiar to the bread produced by commercial bakeries, generally without preservatives. Some bread machines can produce unbaked dough. Some can be used to bake cakes or mix jam.

There are a few conventional ways of talking about some features of bread machines.

Bread machines all have containers that serve as mixing bowls and baking pans. Bread machines are described by reference to the volume of the pan and the capacity to bake a loaf (by comparison, 1 pound loaf would be regular in a bakery or a home baking recipe; 1.5 pounds would be large:

  • small loaf – 1 lb. – 2 cups of flour;
  • medium loaf – 1.5 lb. – 3 cups of flour;
  • large loaf – 2 lb.- 4 cups of flour; and
  • extra large – 2.5 or 3 lb.

The pans have similiar shapes – there are a few general types. The mixing pans have mixing paddles inside the pan, with mechanisms to connect the paddles to a drive system in the machine.The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (Harvard Common Press, 2000) (BLBMC) calls bread machine pans tall, horizontal, and vertical rectangle. Pan shape dictates the shape of the loaf :

  • The tall pan has one paddle in the middle at the bottom; it may be square or oval.  A machine that makes small and medium loaves will have a “tall” pan. 
  • Machines with horizontal pans produce loaves shaped like bread produced in a bakery. These pans have two paddles.
  • A machine that makes 2 pound loaves may be tall, horizontal or vertical rectangle. 
  • Machines that bake 2.5 and 3 pound loaves will have vertical rectangle pans, with a single paddle – e.g. Panasonic 250 or 2500 models; Breville Custom Loaf XL.

Bread machines usually have basic bake and whole wheat bake programs.

  • The basic program is for dough made from white flour milled from wheat – usually higher protein “bread” flour. Basic bake is for enriched bread, made with bread flour, with sugar, milk, butter or oil, or sandwich bread. This program is usually the choice for loaves that use a blend of bread flour and whole wheat, rye and other flours . The basic bake program is versatile enough to make some lean loaves, although lean breads may also be baked in a French bread program or a custom program if a machine has those features.
  • The whole wheat bake program will knead longer and change other phases. These programs work with thousands of recipes,

Whole wheat flour and bread flour weigh the same amount per unit of volume, Bread flour has more of the proteins that bond to form gluten. It is mixed, kneaded and handled differently.

Other cycles:

  • Bake (Rapid), Turbo, Quick Bake, Rapid, etc. They will knead for close to the normal time. They shorten the rise phase(s) but require more yeast for faster fermentation, hence the “Quick” or “Rapid” rising aspect of these programs. Some knead more vigorously. Most will call for more rising agent, or a different rising agent (e.g. a quick-rise or rapid-rise yeast) for a rapid rise or quick-rise program. The dough, to reduce the total time, is programmed to rise once and not knocked down or risen a second or third time.The BLBMC noted there were serious differences between machines with regard to these programs.
  • French or European Bake. These programs have longer rise and bake phases to bake lean crusty loaves. Some machines allow users to create custom settings (e.g. Breville BBM800XL and some Zojirushi models) to set the times for phases to get this program as a custom.
  • Cake or Quick Bread. Quick Breads is a term that bakers use to refer to bread leavened by rising agents other than yeast. This program is for bread and other baked goods leavened with baking powder or baking soda e.g. corn bread and cakes. It mix ingredients into a batter. The leavening agent starts to act as soon as the batter is wet, until the batters sets. Batter made this way can be baked as soon as the mixing has stopped
  • Dough programs mix and knead, and rise but omit the baking phase
  • Bake only – a feature on some machines noted in the BLBMC. It is not common.
  • Jam – some machines have programs to mix jam.

The differences between basic bake, French/European, and the custom program. Times (Panasonic medium loaf, Zojirushi default) in minutes. Baking temp. not tested or published by manufacturers.

MachineProgramRestMix/kneadRiseRise 1Rise 2Rise 3Bake
Panasonic SD-YD250 Basic301511050
Zorjirushi BB-PAC20Basic311935204060
Panasonic SD-YD250 French401017555
Zorjirushi BB-PAC20 Custom –
French/Euro		2218355070

Some gluten-free recipes involve chemical leaven e.g. baking powder, baking soda and can be baked in a cake program. For loaves leavened without yeast, which are traditionally called “Quick Bread’ (BLBMC p. 538) Hensperger prefers the quick bread program or cake program hat mixes a batter and bakes. In the BLBMC (2000), Beth Hensperger addressed gluten-free (p. 170) baking as making bread with yeast as the rising agent, from specialty flour – flour that lacks gluten but could form crumb with additives that made dough gummy. Hensperger suggested using a quick rise bake program. Gluten-free dough has to be mixed and kneaded which occurs in the mix/knead phase in a bread machine program, and then requires time to rise. Some manufacturers including Zojirushi have built their machines with that kind of gluten-free program

Manufacturers are competitive and rely on marketing to sell their own machines. Manufacturers have not agreed on standards and do not use language the same way.

Most bread machines have a user manual and a recipe booklet. It is worth reading these to determine the basic amounts of flour, water, salt and yeast for basic loaves in the machine’s wheat flour programs – basic bread, whole wheat, European/French. A recipe that has worked in one brand machine cannot be used in another brand. Recipes have to be adjusted for different machines.

Resources, Conventions

There are a few more books and a few web sites about bread machines (and many sites with recipes). Some web sites:

There are reviews on the Web – buried in search engine result under superficial reviews and marketing material (SEO is not the consumer’s friend). Some review site are platforms for marketing and promotion or gateways to marketing sites. Comprehensive reviews by knowledgable reviewers are rare. Consumer Reports may never have done breadmakers or bread machines. Culinary magazines snip and snipe. Amateur reviews tend to recite manufacturer marketing claims or focus on features that someone believes are persuavive to consumers, and not on the machine or the bread. The reviews at Breadmakerguides.com are throrough and informative, but the site is not comprehensive. The New York Times affiliate Wirecutter site tackled the subject periodically (eg. 2019), but only covers a few machines.

A bread machine can be used to bake artisinal loaves but there are usually no built-in programs or functions. The machine can be used as a mixer in a dough program, and the dough can be rested, shaped and baked. It is possible, for some loaves, to leave the dough in the pan and stop the machine, and put the pan back and bake the loave after it has fermented and risen.

In bread machines, as in industrial bakeries, the product depends on the recipe, the process and measurement. Beth Hensperger in the BLBMC, consistently with other baking books, list ingredients by volume but suggests weighing ingredients. A user selects a program, which a manufacturer or writer may call a “course” or “cycle”. It takes from 3 to 4 hours or more, after loading the machine, to run a program and bake bread in a “regular” baking program (as opposed to the quick or rapid options available with almost all machines). Some reviewers say a long cycle is a drawback. But a long cycle may bake a better loaf more consistently.

These are expensive appliances. There is little discussion of repairs after the warranty period, and little public discussion about the ability and willingness of manufacturers to supply repair parts, at any price, over the life of a machine.

The machines are susceptible to failure. The drive system, including the drive shafts, is largely not accessible. Some manufacturers will sell a replacement assembly such as a mixing/baking pan. Replacing a pan may be the only way to repair a failure in the bearing and seals of the drive shafts in a pan.

Constraints

Baking

A home baker needs space, several vessels or machines to mix and rest dough, baking pans and an oven.

Bread dough has to be viscous (the standard engineering term) or tenacious or elastic (bakers’ jargon) but extensible (more bakers’ jargon). Dough must be tenacious (elastic) enough to hold shape until the loaf is baked – the dough has become a loaf of “crumb” coasted in “crust”. A tenacious dough holds its shape until the loaf bakes and the heat kills the yeast. When the baker is producing loaves in pans in industrial ovens, the baker needs extensible dough that flows, fills the pan and rises. A home baker may put the dough in bread pans or shape the dough by hand before baking it in the oven. A bread machine pan, like an oven pan, shapes the loaf.

Most programs require the use of wheat flour to form gluten and and yeast to biologically ferment dough. High protein white flour (USA bread flour or Canadian All Purpose flour) and regular grind whole wheat flour (coarse ground is available) are similar in density, weight, starch and protein but form gluten, ferment, rise and bake differently. Whole wheat flour has bran and wheat germ. In traditional baking, it has to be mixed longer to distribute fluid and ensure hydration. There are different approaches to kneading, with some favouring less and others more. In a bread machine, kneading is a succession of stop and go operations of the motor and drive train.

If the user has not loaded the machine properly, the dough will be wrong after the initial mix. The wet flour should be a sticky mass that forms into an elastic, tenacious ball of dough. A dry dough will not knead, flow and rise.  A wet dough may collapse. A dough may be saved by the addition of water or flour during the initial mix and before the knead/mix starts – or ruined by an excessive or untimely intervention. Ideally, the machine should be paused and then allowed to return to mixing. Stopping and restarting the machine will go back to the start of the initial rest. It will eventually get back to mixing, but time will be lost, gluten will have started to form, and some fermentation will have occurred.

Controls

Baking programs have four main phases called, usually, rest, knead, rise, and bake. Bread machine programs vary the length of time in the phases and other parameters. Most machines will count down minutes and seconds to the conclusion of the program in the timer display. Some machines will display the program phase:

  • In the intitial rest phase for a half hour or an hour after being started, bread machines appear to sit and do nothing. Some machines may use the heating element for a few seconds at a time, to warm the ingredients to a common temperature before mixing.
  • The first active phase is mixing and/or “kneading”, about 20-30 minutes or more. A bread machine mixes or kneads by turning the padde(s). The machine will not identify mixing and kneading as separate operations on the machine display:
    • Mixing involves turning the power on and off in short intervals, for 3-5 minutes, imitating the action of a mixing machine at slow speed. The flour, once wet, becomes a mass and then a sticky ball adhering to the paddle(s). The BLBMC calls initial slow mixing Knead 1.
    • The machine pause for less than two minutes between mixing and kneading. The BLBMC calls the second phase mix/knead Knead 2. The bread machine is kneading when it is starts turn the dough quickly for longer intervals, broken by short pauses. Centrifugal force stretches the dough away from the paddle(s). In a machine with two paddles, the ball passes back and forth from paddle to paddle – occasionally the dough tears into two balls – this is not a good thing. The edges of the ball stick to the paddle(s) and pan. The movement stretches the dough until the dough pulls away and moves.
  • During the rise phase the gluten relaxes, the yeast ferments some starch producing gas trapped in little gluten balloons, which makes the dough rise; the dough flows to fill the pan and take the shape of the pan. A baker divides dough and puts it in oven pans. Two hours in a bread machine is short compared to the rise/rests in some artisinal baking techniques, but compares to the combined times for bulk fermentation and proofing (bench and pan) in many bakeries. The machine turns the paddle(s) at intervals in the rise phase, deflating and moving the dough ball – in most machines and programs, twice. The deflated dough fills up again. It is supposed to flow across the bottom of the pan or flow to fill the pan, and expand upward. After the second knock down the dough should relax and flow to fill the bottom of the pan and rise again. When the oven element is turned on, the dough rises in every direction. This “spring” is supposed to push the dough into the four corners of the pan, and fill the pan. Some machines – e.g. – Zojirushi graph the rise into Rise 1 , 2 & 3 and display the subphases in the display.
  • The heating element is switched on for a bake phase. The designer expects the machine to reach the right temperature with that element heating the air inside that space – there is no direct temperature control setting in most machines. A bread machine does not bake quite as hot as kitchen oven; any machine puts out enough heat to bake the dough completely without burning the crust.

Nutrition Labels

Table of Contents

Labels

Sodium

The idea of a low sodium diet is to consume less sodium.

Context

In the view of corporate executives in the capitalist economy, product labels are part of the narrative of a product – it is space paid for by the manufacturer .  Industry likes to control the narrative.  Miller Lite, in commercials “tastes great” and is “less filling”. Campbell Soup advertises its products as full of healthy ingredients.  The chunky versions could be eaten with a fork. Canned soup is high in sodium, which is a problem.

The legal definition of food adulteration may be limited to contamination or the use of unsafe ingredients; the law requires  food companies to label cheese flavoured products and to admit when processed cheese is not a cheese product.

American manufacturers and sellers of goods and services assert free speech rights in advertising as commercial free speech.  Mandatory labelling is compelled commercial speech. Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626  a 1985 decision of the United States Supreme Court, established a constitutional standard where the government can mandate commercial speech, in the form of disclaimers, as long as the information is “purely factual and uncontroversial”, serves a related government interest, and is meant to prevent consumer deception. The lower US federal appellate courts have addressed the content and context of mandatory disclosure:

  • fluorescent light bulbs contain mercury – proper [National Electrical Manufacturers Association v. Sorrell, Kassel, (Vermont) 2001];
  • graphic depictions of cancerous organs on cigarette packages – improper; [R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. FDA 2012];
  • country of origin of meat – proper [American Meat Institute v. US Department of Agriculture 2014];
  • jewellery is sourced with blood diamonds – improper [National Association of Manufacturers v. SEC. 2015]

Wine fraud may involve forgery, unsafe ingredients or misleading presentation.

In Europe in 2017-2018, the regional variation of ingredients became a food scandal – the product is not what was expected by the buyer:

Nutrition Facts

Disclosure of the ingredients of packaged food on the package or a labels is required in the USA and Canada. The disclosure is a quantified ingredient list on the package or label, a table headed “nutrition facts”. This table is on almost everything that has been processed and packaged. It is not on raw meat, fresh fruit or fresh vegetables.

It is not a list of all ingredients. To get a complete list, it is necessary to have access to the databases kept by the government agencies that store the information. The table on a product label will identify sodium in almost anything that has been packaged. However, the Nutrition Facts table is not always clear.

Cheeses vary in sodium content, according to the manufacturer’s method of production. The type of cheese is a factor, as is the manufacturer’s recipe. Much cheese is sold in wedges, wheels or blocks. Retailers selling cheeses as deli counter products may not use Nutrition Facts labels. A consumer, if the product is labelled, has to translate the data into “slices” and estimate sodium.

A Nutrition Facts table lists values per “serving”. The manufacturer chooses the serving size. Some serving sizes are nearly standard. Cheeses conventionally choose a 3 cm cube, a cube 3 cm x 3 cm x 3 cm, (9 cubic cm), and are required to state the weight of the serving. The food brand Kraft lists a cube of the process “cheez” product Velveeta at 30 grams It is sold in extruded blocks weighing 450 grams, 15 cubes, with 450 mg. sodium per cube.

Most manufacturers of soy sauce (a high sodium processed condiment) list the sodium in mg. per tablespoon. The American organic food producer, Braggs labels its Liquid Soy Seasoning as containing 320 mg. sodium per 5 ml. – a mere teaspoon. A tablespoon of Braggs Liquid Soy Seasoning contains 960 mg. sodium – about average for a soy sauce.

There is a second number  – a percentage of the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) Recommend Daily Allowance (“RDA”) per serving. The RDA percentage is useful for some decisions but the RDA is not a prescription or a guaranteed safe allowance – it is high for many people. 

The label can identify sodium in packaged food cooked into a prepared meal.

Labelling of ingredients of restraurant meals is resisted by the food processing and food service industries.

Sodium Searching

Resources

Some authors put the the Food Facts information in recipes in books and magazines.  

The main data repository is the USDA collection of Food Composition Databases. It is comprehensive and powerful but does not seem to have a consumer friendly search interface. There are other data sources on the web. For instance, there are online converters, cooking aids, and Calorie Counters.

Searching for “calorie” or ingredients in a search engine brings up a results including some other tools to search for nutrition facts. Information sources may  promote a fad or a personal theory. Buyer beware.

These resources are scientific and fact based:

Methods and tips

Finding the sodium in a dish or meal prepared at home involves finding the sodium in each ingredient of each dish. Calculating the sodium in one serving of a soup made with fresh ingredients required adding up all the sodium in the ingredients, estimating the number of servings in the pot and dividing the sodium. 

Where is the sodium in prepared food?

  • bacon, ham, sausage or prepared meat;
  • packaged soup, broth, canned vegetables,
  • processed sauces;
  • cheese;
  • toppings or dressings

Pouring off the juice from canned goods, if that is possible, reduces sodium.  For recipes with canned, packaged or pre-cooked ingredients the most effective approach is

  • giving up when a recipe requires a can, or even a cup of a branded soup or sauce – that’s a sodium hit in itself;
  • salt is added to almost anything for flavour according to recipes and kitchen practice. It is unnecessary to add salt to the cooking water boil potatoes or cook rice;
  • if a recipe calls for a sauté in bacon, use oil;
  • use no added sodium ingredients – checking the label for any sodium.   The Eden Organic lines of canned beans are zero sodium ; other canners have introduced no sodium lines;
  • no salt added is not sodium free; a no salt added product is a better choice than the regular product. For instance, no salt added broth has far less sodium than the regular product in a product line;
  • Frozen green beans, peas and corn are low in sodium, but not zero sodium;
  • Time and energy considered, cooking broth and dry beans may be less expensive and help keep out sodium.

Campbell Soups No Salt Added Chicken Broth has sodium at 40 mg. per serving.  RDA percentage 2% (1.7% rounded up). Campbell Soups No Salt Added Vegetable Broth has sodium at 20 mg. per serving  RDA percentage 1% (0.86% rounded up). the serving size is 150 milliters or 2/3 of a cup. A 900 milliliter (4 cups) tetrapack of chicken broth has 240 mg. of sodium.The RDA percentage makes it easy to identify the no salt added product as a better choice than the regular choices in the product line.  Calculating the sodium per serving of a soup or stew takes a spreadsheet with numbers for each ingredient and a sense of the serving size.

For salad dressing one manufacturer may use a smaller serving size which make the sodium, by RDA percentage, seem lower. For mayonnaise, the serving size seems to be standardized at 1 tablespoon.  But 1 tablespoon may mean 13 or 15 mililiters, and products vary:

  • Kraft Real Mayo 70 mg. 3 %
  • Kraft (regular) 77 (or 70) mg. 3%
  • Kraft Caloriwise Real 90 mg. 4 %
  • Kraft Miracle Whip Regular 115 mg. 5%
  • Kraft Miracle Whip Caloriwise 140 mg. 6%
  • Hellman’s Real 90 mg. 4%
  • Hellman’s 1/2 The Fat 135 mg. 6%
  • Hellman’s Organic 90 mg. 4%
  • Neal Brothers Organic (250 ml glass jar, Canadian, artisinal and expensive) 85 mg. 3%

At some point I may put this information in a table that will be part of this post or a future post.

Mayonnaise has a bad reputation with health inspectors.  Mayonnaise made with raw eggs can be a food safety hazard.  But packaged processed mayo is not necessarily the unsafe ingredient. It becomes unsafe when food made with the mayo is left at a termperature at which bacteria grows in food.

Squeeze bottles hamper measuring and invite overly generous portions.

Condiments can easily be overserved – It is easy to consume several “servings”.  An olive in a Greek salad, or on a pizza, or in a martini adds a few hundred mg. sodium.

There are several pepper sauces (e.g. Frank’s Red Hot), with 180 mg. of sodium per teaspoon.  “Traditional” McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce has 35 mg. per teaspoon.  Other Tabasco Sauce brands (e.g. Louisana Gold) are up to 175-200 mg. per tsp.

B%, Flour, Water, Yeast, Salt – Bread & Bread machines

Table of Contents

Flour

Flour, whether refined and milled fine or coarse, is the ground product of grains. It contains plant proteins and starch. Starch is the carbohydrate in bread, and the ingredient thing that makes it food. Starch consisted of complex molecules of glucose and more complex sugars. The molecules react when exposed to water. Starch begins to dissolve which creates the condition when sugar in starch feeds yeast – fermentation. The proteins react to water by making dough sticky and stretchy.

The United States has eight classes for wheat: Durum, Hard Red Spring, Hard Red Winter, Soft Red Winter, Hard White, Soft White, Unclassed, and Mixed.Wheat and flour standards are based on the practices of the milling companies, in classifying wheat. Daniel DiMuzio discussed this in his printed book, Bread Baking, An Artisan’s Perspective (2010) at pp. 16-18. Wheat is classified on:

  • protein content (hard or soft);
  • kernel color (red or white)
  • planting season (spring or fall called “winter wheat”).

Bread flour is made from hard red spring, hard red winter, and hard white winter wheat. The USDA FoodData Central Legacy foods database reports that 100 g. of enriched white bread flour contains 12 g. of protein (12%).

In Canada, wheat is classified in regulations under the Canada Grain Act. Wheat classes are established by the Canadian Grain Commission, which has revised the classes in response to consultation with growers and processors. In Canada a 2015 book called Understanding Ingredients for the Canadian Baker (published under a Creative Commons Licence) noted in Chapter 1.9, as to All-Purpose and Bread flour sold in Canada:

General purpose or home use flours are usually a blend of hard spring wheats that are lower in protein (gluten) content than bread flours. They are top patent flours and contain sufficient protein to make good yeast breads, yet not too much for good quick breads, cakes, and cookies.

….

Bread flour is milled from blends of hard spring and hard winter wheats. They average about 13% protein and are slightly granular to the touch. This type of flour is sold chiefly to bakers because it makes excellent bread with bakery equipment, but has too much protein for home use. It is also called strong flour or hard flour and is second patent flour.

A recipe will describe the kind of flour, as well as the amount. The purposes of this kind of formula are to mix the right amounts of water, yeast and salt to get the right kind of bread,to predict how much dough to expect, and to organize the other steps of the baking process. Recipes for the home baker usually list ingredients by volume – cups, tablespoons etc.  A recipe for a 1 lb. loaf of bread requires 2 cups of white bread flour or whole wheat flour.  By the early 20th century, most recipes referred to a standard measuring cup, which could vary depending on where the recipe was published:

  • A US cup is .87 of an Imperial (U.K., many other English speaking countries) cup. An Imperial cup is 1.2 US cups;
  • A metric cup is a quarter liter (250 millilitres) which is .88 Imperial cups or 1.06 US cups.

The method of filling the measuring cup affects the density and the weight of one cup. When a measuring cup is put into flour and used to scoop the flour, the flour is more dense. When flour is scooped with a scoop and or spooned into a measuring cup, it is less dense. There is a range of weights for a USA cup of (white) bread flour in the sources:

  • 4.25 oz. = 121 g. See: King Arthur Flour ingredient weight chart. King Arthur Flour’s method is to use a scoop, “fluff and sprinkle” and level the top of the measuring cup.;
  • 4.5 oz. = 128 g. Peter Reinhart (The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, and other books) says 4.5 oz.; he measures flour scooped in a scoop and poured into the measuring cup;
  • 4.875 (i.e. 4 and 7/8) oz. = 138 g.;
  • 4.9 oz. = 139 g.;
  • 5 oz. = 141 g. The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (BLBMC) suggests 1 cup of bread flour or whole wheat flour converts at 5 oz. 

Whole wheat flour ranges from 4 oz. = 113 g. (King Arthur) to nearly 5 oz. per cup (BLBMC). While whole wheat and bread flour weigh nearly the same amount per unit of volume, bread flour has more of the proteins that bond to form gluten. It is mixed, kneaded and handled differently.

Many recipes round flour and water to the nearest quarter cup. The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (Harvard Common Press, 2000; by Beth Hensperger) goes to the nearest 1/8 cup. 

Measuring by weight is the standard for commercial baking. Scales in ounces go down to 1/8 oz, but not necessarily to decimal fractions.  Metric kitchen scales go to the nearest gram. That is close enough for flour. Converting a recipe involves interpreting the recipe and making assumptions about the writer measured ingredients, and assumptions about ingredients. Errors in conversion and mistakes in arithmetic (e.g. slips in entering numbers in a calculator) can change the dough and the loaf. A recipe may list flour by weight, or a book may discuss conversion. Where recipes provide weight, I refer to weight. If not, I guess and experiment. In recipe conversion usually drag-scooped cups are more appropriate.

For bread machine bread, I weigh (white) bread flour (Canadian All Purpose) and whole wheat flour at 139 g. per cup in a recipe.

Zorjirushi bread machine manuals recommend scooping and filling measuring cups or weighing. The Zojirushi recipes imply:

IngredientVolumeWeight1 cup =
Bread Flour4 ¼ cups544 g.128 g.
Whole wheat flour4 ¾ cups570 g.120 g.

B% (Bakers’ formula, or bakers’ ratio

Baker percentage (B%), a method of managing the production of bread. It is explained in a some baker cookbooks, For instance Peter Reinhardt devotes pages 40-45 of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice to this topic. It is a tool taught to professional bakers, and addressed in texts such as Daniel T. DiMuzio’s Bread Baking; An Artisan’s Perspective. For the baker-manager, it is a calculation to scale inputs to create 2, 10, 100 or 1,000 consistent loaves of bread. The assumptions are consistency of ingredients, equipment, energy, working space, and time.  For managing production, every ingredient is put into the formula.  It is as precise as it needs to be, for how it is used. B% is explained:

B% is a list of ingredients by weight, for a batch of dough – an instruction to make baking consistent and get the same result every time. . The professional baker will have to mix enough dough to bake dozens or hundreds of loaves, divide it, shape it and bake it. The essential ingredients – flour, water, yeast and salt – need to be measured, mixed, fermented and baked the same way. The home baker uses less ingredients and will only make a few loaves in one session.

The simplest version of the formula or ratio starts with the weight of the four essential ingredients. The weight of flour is treat as 100%, The weight of salt and yeast are noted and calculated as a percentage of flour weight. Water is weighed and is also calculated as a percentage of flour weight – the percentage is called hydration.

A couple of simple recipes follow. The first is a dough for 2 batard loaves of French bread. The second is for 2 pounds of bread, followed by dough for several loaves of ciabbata or baguette

WeightPercentwhatBy volume,
approx.
White Flour580 g.100flour weight4 cups
Water406 g.70hydration1 ¾ cups
Instant Yeast4 g..71 ½ tsp.
Salt12 g.22 tsp.
Total172.7percentage total
Emily Buehler, Bread Science, Location 2878
CiabbataCiabatta %Baguette
Baguette %
Bread Flour1377 g.1002156 g.100
Water1060 g.771488 g.69
Instant Yeast10 g..712 g..6
Salt28 g.254 g.2.5
179.7172.1
Daniel DiMusio, Bread Baking

When one type of flour is used, the flour weight is the total flour weight.

When different flours are combined, the weights are added to determine total flour weight, even when flours differ in density and protein content. The relative amounts of flour are identified as a percentage of the total flour weight (e.g. 50% bread flour and 50% whole wheat; or 90% bread flour and 10% rye flour). It gets complicated. While any dry ingredient can be weighed and a B% calculated, not all dry ingredients count for Total Flour. The total flour weight can be the sum of the weights of:

  • flour, including any grain product such as rolled oats, grain meal or vital wheat gluten (gluten flour); or
  • all dry ingredients except salt, yeast, dry seeds, and fruit.

The weight of every ingredient can be listed and expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight. When the of flour, salt, yeast and water percentages are added up, the sum of percentages is well over 100%. A wet dough for a ciabatta bread will add up to 179%. This means the wet dough weighs 179% of the dry flour alone, at the beginning of the process.

I use mainly use metric weight; I may also note US ounces.

Nutrition Facts labels on bags of flour may suggest the weight of a quarter cup of flour. Online conversion calculators and tables also may appear to be useful. These are based on software that hook into the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Data Cental tables or other data, which may use loosely filled cups, rather than drag-scooped cups. Other flours might graph to a mean, but show more variability. These numbers are high and can be reduced by a few grams per cup.

White Whole Wheat flour is mentioned in a recipe from BLBMC (p. 127) “White Whole Wheat Flour Bread”. (see variation with 3 cups of flour). It is supposed to work like bread flour; a loaf is supposed to work on basic bake, which is a “white bread” cycle. It is available from King Arthur mills in the USA:

White whole-wheat flour is … made with hard white spring or winter wheat — the bran, germ, and endosperm are all ground to result in another 100 percent whole-wheat flour. … because it’s made with hard white wheat instead of hard red wheat, like whole-wheat flour, it has a paler color and its taste is milder. It’s still nuttier than all-purpose flour because it includes the fibrous bran and germ of the wheat, but it’s a more approachable whole-wheat flour, particularly for those who don’t enjoy the hearty taste of whole-wheat flour.

It can be used interchangeably with whole-wheat flour in any recipe

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/learn/guides/white-whole-wheat

I substituted Rogers “Whole Wheat Bread Flour”, for White Whole Wheat in a recipe. The Rogers product was an enhanced whole wheat flour, higher in protein (gluten) than the flour in the recipe. It was a lesson. I stopped looking for flour that can’t be obtained in this part of Canada.

Water

Plain Water

In a simple recipe, there is just water. A cup depends on the recipe and the context. A cup of water,

  • USA standard, is 236.6 grams, which rounds up to 237 g. (in the metric system one milliliter of water is one gram).
  • An Imperial cup of water converts to 284 grams.
  • A metric cup of water is 250 grams.

Too much water is cited by many sources as a cause of some kinds of failure – weak and sunken loaves.  Too much is in relation to the amount of flour that is being hydrated, and the mixing or kneading action of the machine. An extra 30 grams (1/8 cup = 2 tbsp.) of water into 3 cups of flour means a wet sloppy dough.  The goal is tenacious and somewhat elastic (i.e. that pulls back to its original size and shape) dough that is also extensible – it relaxes.  T

Milk, Honey, Eggs, Syrups

A recipe may include milk, syrup, eggs, butter or vegetable oil. Wet ingredients, except oils extracted from pressed seeds, are water with sugar, fat and protein molecules suspended or dissolved in water. The water in a wet ingredient will interact with flour if it is not already bonded to something else. Any wet ingredient can be weighed and a B% calculated, but not all wet ingredients are counted as water. When a water-based fluid like milk is the only water in a dough, the weight of the milk is used to calculate hydration of the dough. Milk is nearly all water, but not all of the water is available to bond to the starch in flour – only 85 to 90%. 1 + 1/4 cups of skim milk has 1 + 3/16 cups (1 cup + 3 Tbsp.) of water. Some water remains bound to natural milk sugars including lactose and to milk fats. A cup of fluid cow’s milk weights 244-245 grams and contains about 12 g. of lactose and other milk sugars according to USDA averages. The sugars are hygroscopic but milk has ample water to hydrate the flour. Whole milk should be 3.25% butter fat. 2% milk, 1% milk, and non-fat (or skim) milk are reduced fat milk products.

Reconstituted milk (powder and fresh water) is nearly the same as milk. The ingredients on packages of milk powder and on the Web vary. The ratio of powder to water may be 4 or 5 Tablespoons to 1 cup. It depend on the brand and one use choices. Substituting powdered milk and water for fluid milk can be approached by mixing the powder and water and pouring the reconstituted milk into the measuring vessel, using the reconstituted milk in the amount in the recipe. In mixing the milk, 1 cup of water will gain weight but will only slightly change volume.

Unpasteurized milk can lead to surprizes. Some bakers think milk,  real or reconstituted, should be scalded to denature proteins. Mostly dry milk is produced by baking to dry out the water. The heat denatures the protein.

Butter, maple syrup, honey and other syrups have some water. The home baker’s trick is reduce water in a recipe by 1/4 cup for 1 cup of honey, when honey is used to replace sugar. The average for honey in the US and Canada is 17 g water per 100 g of honey. The typical pure maple syrup for sale in the US or Canada is 32 grams of water per 100 grams of syrup. A large egg, in the Canadian egg grading system, is about 57 g.  A large egg contributes 36 g. to hydration – nearly 3/16 of a cup of water.

For ingredients that are largely water – i.e. milk, butter, eggs, syrups – rather than seed or vegetable oil I note weight of water, taken from conversion tables.

Wet ingredients that contain water may be noted to see if a dough has a higher real hydration rate than a simple calculation implies. Ingredients that contain water are not necessarily counted directly in industrial B% – it involves conversions and extra math. Water content of baking ingredients can be calculated by referring the USDA Food Composition Databases. For a Canadian product, the Canadian Nutrient File may have the value. Using the databases takes some practice. Not all of the water reported in the data is released from the source ingredient and incorporated into dough. It may be necessary to use a teaspoon or two more water to get the hydration right.

I put in oil by volume and do not bother to weight it or calculate a ratio.

Yeast and Salt

Yeast

Yeast means yeast organisms commercially grown, preserved, packaged, and distributed as a leavening agent. Most grocery stores carry active dry yeast and smaller grained dry yeast: instant yeast, quick-rise/rapid-rise yeasts, or “bread machine” yeast. Cakes and blocks of fresh yeast are rare, and not usually mentioned in home baking recipes. Recipes may refer to active dry yeast by volume (tablespoons and teaspoons); or by packets. Active dry yeast was and is still sold in foil packets containing .25 oz. of yeast. This was a tablespoon at one time. Active dry yeast became somewhat denser and finer grained. A packet of modern active dry yeast is about 2.25 teaspoons, but is still .25 oz. = 7 grams. A 7 gram/.25 oz. packet of modern active dry yeast is equivalent to 2 tsp. (6.2 grams) of instant yeast. Bread machine recipes refer to Instant yeast, bread machine yeast or active dry yeast. Conversion is simple if a recipe refers to instant yeast or to quick rise or “bread machine yeast. 1 tsp = 3.1 g. I tried to make conversions from active dry to instant yeast fast and simple with a table, which is in my post Dry Yeast.

Salt

Salt has several effects:

  • it alters or enhances the flavour of bread,
  • it preserves bread, for a few days, against some microbial infestation
  • it interacts with amino acids making up the gluten proteins, and affects the elasticity of dough. Less salt means a less elastic and tenacious dough.
  • it inhibits the yeast and slows the fermentation.

Thebakers’ rule of thumb is that when salt is decreased, yeast should also be decreased. This avoids an overinflated loaf that will collapse or overflow the baking pan, But the effects of salt on bread dough and baking are complicated.

Recipes that say “salt” always refer to ordinary table salt, unless a particular type or brand is stated. Some table salts are fine-grained and denser. Kosher salt has large crystals and it less dense. A baker measuring by volume should be aware of the differences, but crystal size do not affect measurement by weight. 1 tsp of ordinary table salt = 5.7 g. For quick reference in baking and bread machine baking, I read a refererence in a recipe as table salt, conventionally ground, and convert to weight:

Volume tsp. fractionVolume tsp. decimalWeight grams
115.7
7/8.8754.99
3/4.754.3
5/8.6253.6
1/2.502.8
3/8.3752.1
1/4.251.4
1/8.1250.7
Volume

Weighing

For bread machine baking, yeast and salt should be measured to .1 gram, which requires a small high precision scale. This item is more expensive than measuring spoons, but important. Some brick and mortar retail stores sell high precision scales. There are several inexpensive scales available online.

Conversions, Volume and Weight

The King Arthur Flour ingredient weight table is good, but refers to ingredients as if all suppliers of a particular item have uniform standards and methods. I keep my data about baking ingredients in a spreadsheet on a local (i.e. where I am) device, rather than on a remote server on the Internet in the cloud.