How bread is made - Overview - Federation of Bakers (2024)

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How bread is made - Overview - Federation of Bakers? ›

When flour is moistened and stirred, beaten or kneaded, gluten develops to give dough `stretch`. The elastic framework of gluten holds the gas produced by the fermentation action of yeast. In a year of good harvest a bread grist may consist of 80% or more of home grown wheat.

It consists of a series of steps including mixing, fermentation, makeup, proofing, baking, cooling, slicing and packaging. Due to their critical role, these processes must be carefully operated to meet pre-set conditions and specifications.

Baking is the final step in making yeast-leavened (bread, buns, rolls, crackers) and chemically-leavened products (cakes, cookies). It's a thermal process that uses an oven, which transfers heat to the dough pieces via: Conduction through heated surfaces. Convection through hot air.

In typical high-volume bread-production, the dough is cut into individual pieces and allowed to "recover" for 5–8 minutes (intermediate proofing). Each piece of dough is then shaped, placed in a baking tin and moved to the humidity- and temperature-controlled proofing chamber, where it sits for about 45–50 minutes.

In bread making (or special yeasted cakes), the yeast organisms expel carbon dioxide as they feed off of sugars. As the dough rises and proofs, carbon dioxide is formed; this is why the dough volume increases. The carbon dioxide expands and moves as the bread dough warms and bakes in the oven. The bread rises and sets.

Automated machines can now mix doughs, knead them, shape them, and bake them in a fraction of the time it would take to do it by hand. This has allowed bakeries to produce more bread in less time and with less labour, resulting in greater efficiency and cost savings.

The egg-liquid mixture is then brushed over baked goods—like bread or pastries—before going in the oven to help give them a strikingly golden color and an eye-catching gloss after baking. An egg wash can also help seal the edges of filled pastries or hand pies and help any sprinkled sugar adhere to the dough.

What is the basic making method of bread? ›

Instrumental springiness was positively associated with sponge and dough mixing time (P = 0.02). Sponge and dough mixing and baking times were the two most significant process parameters affecting the bread physical quality and hence should be optimised.

There are the two main methods to produce bread in industry: either to divide the mass of dough in loaves at the right final target weight and then carry out the final operations. Or to produce a continuous flow of dough and then carry out the final operations thanks to a lamination process.