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in this way, you cannot go by the stated figure (1.5 per cent) because it tells you only what percentage the salt is of the flour (in this example, salt is in fact 0.89 per cent of the dough). Bakers’ percentages are usually justified in terms of assisting with the scaling up or down of a recipe. But with metric measurements nothing could be easier.

      Eggs

      I show eggs in terms of grams, which allows for greater accuracy in view of the considerable variation in egg sizes. One large egg weighs (without the shell) about 50g and most of the recipes involving egg therefore use multiples of 50g.

      Liquids

      I express all liquids in grams rather than millilitres because it is often easier to measure small quantities by weight (measuring jugs being rather inaccurate and dependent on the angle at which you hold them). When adding oil to a recipe, unless the method recommends otherwise, it is handy to pour it straight from the bottle into the bowl with the flour and salt, having reset the scales to zero: this saves dirtying another utensil and can be more accurate. One millilitre of water weighs one gram, so you can either weigh or measure, as you prefer. Oil weighs slightly less than water (which is why it floats on it) so some inaccuracy can creep in if you treat one millilitre as one gram, but this is hardly significant in small quantities.

      Scaling up recipes

      Most ingredient quantities can be scaled up or down pro rata. There are two main exceptions. More yeast is generally used in small doughs to compensate for the fact that, in typical kitchen conditions, they lose heat quite quickly, whereas large volumes of dough conserve and even stimulate heat gain. As a rough rule of thumb, yeast should be reduced by one-third for doughs between 2 kilos and 10 kilos and by half beyond that. The recipes in this book generally recommend less yeast than usual, so some experimentation may be required. Do bear in mind that slower fermentation with less yeast almost always results in bread with better flavour, texture and keeping quality.

      Substituting flours

      Unless there is a stated reason for not doing so, white wheat flour can be replaced by wholemeal or vice versa in any of the recipes. Some adjustment of the liquid may be necessary because the bran in wholemeal flour can, with time, absorb a considerable amount of moisture. Doughs with a high proportion of wholemeal will not expand to quite the same volume as those made with white flour.

      Water temperature

      To determine the temperature of water for breadmaking, use the following formula:

      2 × desired dough temperature minus actual flour temperature equals required water temperature

      Example: Desired dough temperature is 27°C; flour temperature is likely to be around 20°C in summer and, in extreme circumstances, 6°C in winter.

      Summer: 2 × 27 = 54 = 20 = 34°C

      Winter: 2 × 27 = 54 = 6 = 48°C

      Conversion tables

      In some instances the conversions given below have been rounded to produce more friendly numbers. If you need to be super-accurate, use the conversion factors given (and a calculator).

       Weight

      g = gram; kg = kilogram

      To covert ounces (oz) to grams (g), multiply by 28.35

      To convert grams to ounces, multiply by 0.035 (or divide by 28.35)

       Volume

      fl oz = fluid ounce; tsp = teaspoon; tbsp = tablespoon; ml = millilitre

      To covert fluid ounces to millilitres, multiply by 28.35

      To convert millilitres to fluid ounces, multiply by 0.035 (or divide by 28.35)

       Temperature

      To covert Fahrenheit to Celsius, subtract 32 and multiply by 0.555 To convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, multiply by 1.8 and add 32

       CHAPTER FOUR THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS

      ‘To sustain man’s strength as it was intended, bread must be made of sound and pure ingredients; and no economy can be more false or mistaken in its character than that which seeks to cheapen it by any admixture of materials which are not so.’ ELIZA ACTON, The English Bread Book (Longman, 1857)

      One of the beauties of bread is that it can be made with so few ingredients. Flour and water alone, treated in the right way, are sufficient. The following run-down of the essentials is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise but a practical guide. It is useful, but not essential, to read this before starting on the recipes.

      Wheat flour

      Flour is produced from a large number of wheat varieties, grown in different soils and climates (for other grains, see below). Millers select and blend different varieties and batches of grain to create flours for all purposes, from biscuits and cakes to bread and pasta. Unfortunately, there is no international classification system for flour, so it can be hard to grasp the different properties and uses denoted by a bewildering array of names and descriptions.

      In order to make a judgement about the nutritional quality and likely baking performance of a flour, the home baker needs answers to the following questions:

       How was it milled? Stoneground for better retention of nutrients, or roller- milled?

       What is its ‘extraction rate’ – i.e. how brown is it?

       What is its protein content? What sort of a dough will it make? Strong and tight or soft and extensible?

      If a flour has been stoneground, this will almost always be advertised on the bag since it is, rightly, deemed to be an advantage and therefore a selling point. The other two issues are more complicated.

      Extraction rate

      Extraction rate is the term used in the UK to denote the amount of the original grain left in the flour. Milling between stones gives a flour with all the constituents of the original grain mixed together: the mill has ‘extracted’ 100 per cent of the grain. This is known as a high extraction rate flour. To make white flour, the mill strips and sifts out the germ and the bran layers on the outside of the wheat grain which together constitute about 28 per cent of the grain, leaving a 72 per cent’ extraction flour. There are various grades in between: brown flour has some of the bran and germ replaced to take it back to about 80 per cent of the original grain.

      The problem for the home baker is that, apart from ‘100 per cent whole- meal’, extraction rate is rarely mentioned on flour bags in so many words. Indeed, words like ‘brown’ and ‘mixed grain’ actually confuse the issue, perhaps sounding a bit nearer to ‘whole’ than they really are.

      Here are some typical UK flours with their approximate extraction rates and other details:

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