(1) flour
As mentioned earlier, dough relies on gluten to form gluten, so the content of protein in the wheat flour you choose is very important.
According to the content of protein in flour, we divide flour into three types: high gluten flour, medium gluten flour and low gluten flour. Among them, high gluten flour is the flour with high content in protein, and it is also the flour that we need to choose in our daily western bread.
Because durum wheat with high protein content is added to the flour, the protein content of high gluten flour is as high as11.5%-14.5%, which can make the dough form strong gluten. After repeated folding and beating, it can be very soft and elastic, can be used to shape various shapes, and can also withstand long-term fermentation and expansion. On the other hand, if the dough is not kneaded sufficiently, its strong ribs will make the dough very hard, and finally the baked bread will be like a stone.
Generally, the better high-gluten flour that can be bought in China is Golden Elephant and Bai Yan. The price in Bai Yan is cheaper, but I prefer to use the golden elephant. Protein content is moderate, and it is easy to film.
(2) Yeast
Besides flour, you also need to buy the right yeast.
Yeast is generally divided into dry yeast and fresh yeast. As we often see in many advanced tutorials, all kinds of homemade raisin yeast, apple yeast and yogurt yeast belong to fresh yeast.
And all kinds of vacuum packed compressed granular yeast you bought online belong to dry yeast.
Fresh yeast has a high osmotic pressure and is in an active state, so the fermentation effect is better. But since we talk about bread first, I suggest you start with simple high-activity dry yeast.
I usually use French swallows as yeast. The fermentation effect is good, and it is very sugar-tolerant and salt-tolerant. If you use a lot, you can buy 100g g.
If you don't use much, I suggest you buy 5g individual packaging, and disassemble as much as you use each time, so as not to easily affect the activity of unopened yeast.
(3) butter
Grease is essential in many bread recipes. Butter is commonly used, which can wrap gluten molecules, provide better ductility and plasticity, delay the drying and aging of bread after baking, and also provide the unique flavor and color of oil.
However, butter is not cheap. Only 5000ml of milk can often make a qualified piece of butter, so margarine was born. It is a butter substitute, which imitates the taste of butter by partially hydrogenating vegetable oil and adding artificial spices. Unfortunately, it imitates the flavor and reduces the cost, but it will bring trans fatty acids at high temperature, which has a great impact on the body. So it is not recommended that you buy this vegetable butter when making bread at home.
What kind of animal butter should I choose? I usually use two brands myself. I use French president's brand fermented butter, non-fermented and organic butter, and I use Dutch Loho.
The president is fermented butter, so the flavor will have the slightly sour taste of fermented dairy products, and the flavor is more complicated. This flavor is quite versatile when used in baking, unless you especially don't like the taste of fermented milk.
Loho Holland is certified by the Netherlands, the European Union and China. It is a kind of non-fermented butter with mellow smell, rich milk flavor and no fermented sour taste. As long as you can accept the taste of milk, you can accept it.
Of course, Anjia in New Zealand and Accor in France are also common good butter, but I really don't use much, so I won't introduce them one by one.
Third, knead the dough and choose a reliable "partner"
(1) chef machine
Earlier, we talked about the importance of gluten. Whether a piece of dough can be folded and slapped repeatedly quickly to form a dense gluten network is the key to whether a piece of bread can finally withstand fermentation and expansion.
If you plan to knead, break and fold the dough yourself, then I suggest that you must be very, very well prepared. It is very likely that after you sweat for a period of time, the dough will not reach the ideal extension state, and if this process is too long, the dough may eventually taste bad because of continuous fermentation.
Many years ago, I tried to knead dough by myself. I bought an oven and wanted to bake a bread with great interest. As a result, I have been beating and kneading noodles in the kitchen in summer. More than an hour passed and the dough still didn't come out. In the end, I really couldn't move it. I threw it into the oven and fermented it directly. As expected, I baked a stone-like bread, and the next three or four days were accompanied by pain in my shoulders and arms.
Since then, I have never rubbed my face again. I gritted my teeth and bought the first chef machine-Bosch 5 Series.
Many years ago, at that time, domestic brands hardly involved chef machines, only bread machines, which were very simple to buy. Nothing more than BKK-Bosch, Kenwood Kaywood, Kitchenaid kitchen treasures, and all of them are very, very expensive, so I bought Bosch Series 5 at that time and took great risks from Haitao, Germany. At that time, this model also sent a lot of accessories.
However, due to too many plastic fittings and joints of this Bosch, it began to age after serving for more than three years, and the joints began to lose plastic powder. Because it doesn't want to eat plastic and its accessories are not easy to buy, it officially retired last year.
Re-select a chef machine, starting with Daewoo's new chef machine. Super-running design with cool appearance, all-solid die-casting aluminum body, smooth and not easy to shake when kneading dough; The internal all-metal gear is more durable than the traditional belt mechanism. High-power DC 800w motor, with a capacity of 5.2L, is more suitable for home use, and the price is much cheaper than K's. It has been used for some time now, and the effect is ok.