Baking Ingredients - All About Salt, Sweeteners, Fats and Liquids

Salt

Salt is a minor, but essential ingredient in baked goods. It rarely exceeds 2% of total flour weight in even the saltiest bread doughs, and often comes to 0.10% or less of flour weight in sweet products. However, its ability to accent and intensify the flavors of the other ingredients is indisputable - as is its own assertive presence when used as a topping for bagels, salt sticks and other rolls.

Salt and yeast don't get along: in yeast dough, salt slows yeast fermentation. Some bakers delay adding salt to their doughs until all of the other ingredients, including the yeast, are well-mixed. We recommend mixing the dry ingredients for any bread dough - including salt and yeast - well before you add the liquids. That way the salt will be too dispersed throughout the dough to affect the yeast.

Yet, omitting or reducing the amount of salt in yeast dough can cause the dough to rise too quickly, adversely affecting the shape and flavor of bread. Also, when added to bread dough, salt works to tighten the gluten strands that are formed, which makes them stronger. By strengthening these gluten strands, salt enables the dough to hold carbon dioxide more efficiently.

If for any reason you’re trying to eat less salt, you may be interested in limiting the amount you use in your bread. It’s not impossible, but you’ll need to be careful before making any adjustments. Salt is added to bread dough at approximately 1.8 to 2% of the weight of flour. Sticking to this percentage ensures there is enough salt present in the dough to do its very important job. Once you start to decrease that amount, the quality of your bread starts to decline as well. The good news is, the amount of salt in the average slice of bread is actually very small, so it's generally worth it to stick to the measurement called for in a recipe. The reason why it is a high source of salt in our diet is due to the amount of bread we eat, along with pasta and other foods made mainly from flour.

Although a wide variety of salts - ranging from pure sodium chloride all the way to mineral-rich, colored "gourmet" sea salts from the far reaches of our planet - all salts are interchangeable for purposes of most recipes.

Most recipes today are written for using table salt. The only things to be aware of are:

Sweeteners

Sugar

Until the end of the 18th century, sugar was a luxury that had to be imported from the Mediterranean or the New World. Then, in 1790, an enterprising entrepreneur built Europe's first beet sugar refinery in Silesia using a technology that had been developed in Germany more than 40 years before.

By 1840, Poland and the Ukraine supported more than 600 sugar factories. In 1848, the first year for which statistics are available, Russian sugar production, which includes Poland, was 23,900 tons. By the end of the 19th century, total output of 750,000 tons made Russia the fourth-largest beet sugar producer in the world, behind Germany, Austria and France.

Jews controlled a significant share of the Eastern European sugar industry. In 1832, Herrmann Epstein was the first Jew to build a refinery in Poland, which by 1850 was the country's largest and most modern. In Russia, Jewish entrepreneurs named Brodsky, Halperin and Sachs made their fortunes in sugar; by 1872, Jewish enterprises were responsible for one-quarter of Russian sugar production, and some estimates put this percentage as high as two-thirds, when Jewish-managed factories are included.

From then on, the Yiddish cooking of Russia and Poland took on its characteristic sweetness and differentiating, for example, the challah and gefilte fish of Poland and the Ukraine from those of Lithuania, Hungary, and Bohemia. And although sugar all but eclipsed it as the sweetener of choice, honey continued to hold an important, if limited, place in Jewish baking, notably in like lekach and tayglech (honey balls), which no Rosh Hashanah table is complete.

Sugar does more than just sweeten. In meringues and creamed with shortening, the sharp edges of the sugar crystals rub together to form the air pockets that help to leaven sponge and chiffon cakes. Sugar inhibits gluten development, producing more tender doughs.

Sugar also provides food for yeast, although high percentages of sugar actually retard yeast activity. Since it caramelizes at around 330°F/165°C, sugar promotes browning. And it is hygroscopic - that is, it attracts and holds water - which helps keep baked goods moist and fresh.

Adding more sugar to a recipe than the yeast can eat will, no surprise, add sweetness to the finished product. Sugar aids in browning, can help tenderize the bread and also holds onto moisture to help inhibit staling. Be careful, though—too much sugar will severely inhibit gluten production. So, unless you plan on adding additional gluten to the dough (in the form of vital wheat gluten or gluten flour), keep the sugar in the recipe to no more than 2 tablespoons/cup of flour.

Chemically, sugar consists of pure sucrose, which itself is made up of a fructose molecule that is joined to a glucose molecule, and it is this structure that causes sugar to recrystallize easily, causing headaches when it occurs.

To overcome this problem, bakers often will add either glucose, light corn syrup or honey to their simple sugar syrups, or an acid like lemon juice or cream of tartar, which breaks the bond between the fructose and glucose, forming invert sugar. Interestingly, because fructose is sweeter than either sucrose or glucose, invert sugar is sweeter than the white sugar from which it's made.

Types of Sugar

Other Sweeteners

Besides sugar, other sweeteners play a prominent role in the baker's repertoire as well:

About Fats and Dairy Products

Fat that is incorporated in bread dough will inhibit gluten formation. The resulting loaf will not rise quite as high as a loaf made without fat. On the positive side, fats, especially butter and olive oil, add a lot of flavor to the finished product. Fats keep the crumb tender and can help improve the shelf life of your bread by a day or so. Almost any fat can be added to a bread dough.

Fat, in the form of solid shortening, margarine, or butter; or in the liquid form of oil contributes tenderness, moistness, and a smooth mouthfeel to baked goods. Fats enhance the flavors of other ingredients as well as contributing its own flavor, as in the case of butter. In baked goods such as muffins, reducing the amount of fat in a recipe results in a tougher product because gluten develops more freely. Another tenderizing agent such as sugar can be added or increased to tenderize in place of the fat.

In dough, fats inhibit the formation of gluten by coating some of the flour grains, preventing them from absorbing water, which starts the gluten process. With less gluten, doughs become more flexible, more elastic and less sticky. In baked goods, fat produces a tenderer crust and softer, more chewy crumb, and lengthens shelf life by slowing the rate of staling. In fact, the term "shortening" comes from the fact that fats actually shorten the gluten chains and shortbreads are, by definition, baked goods that are very high in fat.

A small amount of fat in a yeast dough helps the gluten to stretch without breaking, providing "give" to the final shaped proofing yielding a loaf with greater volume.

Vegetable Oil

Although technically olive oil is a "vegetable" oil, as are palm, coconut, avocado and other fruit and kernel oils, vegetable oil, generally refers exclusively to the corn, cottonseed, safflower, sunflower, peanut, canola and blended commodity cooking oils sold in every food store throughout the land. Oil is used in some muffin, bread and cake recipes. Oil pastry is mealy rather than flaky. To substitute oil for butter or margarine, use 7/8 cup oil for 1 cup butter or margarine. If oil is used in place of a solid fat for some cake recipes, the texture will be heavier unless the sugar and egg are increased.

Vegetable Shortening

Like vegetable oil, vegetable shortening - shortening for short - is colorless and virtually tasteless. However, unlike oil, it's treated with hydrogen so that it will solidify at room temperature. Shortening is 100 percent fat and is solid at room temperature. It is often made of hydrogenated (solidified by adding hydrogen) vegetable oils, but sometimes contains animal fats. The flakiness of pastry comes from solid fat such as shortening or lard rolled in layers with flour. In some recipes for cookies or cake, shortening is creamed with sugar to trap air. A lighter product will result. There are emulsifiers in shortening to help emulsify shortening and liquid. This means that oil and water stay mixed together, creating an even distribution of flavors and a consistent texture in batters and dough.

Because of this inherent structure, shortening holds air beautifully, making it the preferred medium for creamed cakes, which depend on trapped air to leaven them, and for butter cream frostings, which achieve their lightness because of the large amount of air they incorporate.

Shortening's structure also makes it ideal for laminated doughs like puff pastry and Danish because it's so much harder for the flour to absorb than oil or water. Instead of becoming part of the dough, the shortening holds together and spreads out between layers of dough, creating the flakiness we expect. In cookies too, shortening coats the outside of the flour grains, inhibiting the absorption of water - and gluten formation - to a far greater degree than oil, producing cookies that spread least in the oven and dissolve in your mouth.

When buying shortening, it's important to always check the label, since manufacturers can add ingredients that affect the product's behavior. From a baker's point of view, the most important thing to look for is whether your shortening contains mono- and diglycerides, which act as an emulsifier that facilitates the combination of fats and water-based liquids and improve the quality of cake batters, but which can have a negative effect on butter creams and laminated doughs.

Butter

Many home bakers use butter because it tastes good and has a less negative public image than hydrogenated vegetable fats. Professional bakers, who are concerned with cost as much as with taste, are more likely to use a combination of shortening and butter, or 100% shortening plus butter flavoring to achieve the same results.

In fact, butter behaves identically to vegetable shortening, with a couple of notable differences. First, U.S. butter is made from cream and has a fat content of at least 80 percent, which means that a given volume of butter will have measurably less shortening power than an equal amount of Crisco or some other vegetable shortening. . The remaining 20 percent is water with some milk solids. Butter imparts a good flavor without a greasy mouth feel to baked goods because it melts at body temperature.

European-style butters, which are increasingly available in the U.S., contain less water, about 14%-15%, making them easier to work with in laminated doughs like puff paste and Danish.

Cultured butter, which is also available in gourmet groceries and is produced by adding various strains of bacteria to milk in order to separate the butterfat, often have a strong, distinctive flavor that won't necessarily improve the taste of your baked goods; better to avoid cultured butters entirely and stick with the standard churned variety.

Margarine is made from fat or oil that is partially hydrogenated, water, milk solids, and salt. Vitamins and coloring are usually added also. The fat or oil can be of animal or vegetable origin. Margarine has the same ratio of fat to non-fat ingredients as butter (80:20), and can be used interchangeably with butter.

Reduced fat substitutes have less than 80 percent fat. These do not work the same as butter or margarine in baked goods, though some specially formulated recipes can be found on the packages of these products. Fat free margarines also are available and contain no fat. These margarines are best used as spreads.

Eggs

Eggs added to dough help with rising. A bread dough rich with egg will rise very high, because eggs are a leavening agent (think genoise or angel food cake). As well, the fats from the yolk help to tenderize the crumb and lighten the texture a bit. Eggs also contain the emulsifier lecithin. Lecithin can add to the overall consistency of the loaf.

Besides flour, no other ingredient has the greatest overall impact on the quality of baked goods, nor can any other ingredient match the number and diversity of the roles eggs play in breads, cakes, pastries and cookies. Eggs serve many functions in baked goods. They add flavor and color, contribute to structure, incorporate air when beaten, provide liquid, fat, and protein, and emulsify fat with liquid ingredients. Reducing or omitting egg yolks can result in less tenderness. Reducing or omitting egg whites can result in less volume. Cakes made without the emulsifying action from the egg yolk may not have a uniform flavor and texture. If a low fat, low cholesterol baked product is desired, use 2 egg whites for 1 whole egg; the white has very little fat or cholesterol. When a recipe calls for an egg, the best size to use is a 2 oz. Grade A large egg.

One large egg weighs about 1.75oz/50g without the shell, and consists of about 1.2oz/33g of albumin, or egg white, and about 0.55oz/17g of yolk. The white contains almost 90% water and about 10% protein, and the yolk is 50% water, 16% protein and about 34% fat. In bakers' formulas, yolks are considered fats and whites count as liquids.

In baking of all kinds, eggs perform a wide range of functions.

Liquids

Liquids are necessary in baked goods for hydrating protein, starch and leavening agents. When hydration occurs, water is absorbed and the chemical changes necessary for structure and texture development can take place. Liquids contribute moistness to the texture and improve the mouth feel of baked products. When water vaporizes in a batter or dough, the steam expands the air cells, increasing the final volume of the product.

Milk

Liquid is necessary to make bread, but that doesn’t mean we are limited to water. Replacing all or part of the water with milk will lend itself to a more tender, sweeter product. The sugar in milk, lactose, is not eaten by the yeast, so it is left to add a subtle sweetness to the finished bread. Milk also increases the nutritional value of the bread by adding additional proteins. A dough made with milk will brown more readily than one made with water.

Milk contributes water and valuable nutrients to baked goods. It helps browning to occur and adds flavor. When making yeast dough, milk should be scalded and cooled before adding to other ingredients. This is done to improve the quality of the dough and the volume of the bread.

Milk is a highly complex ingredient. Liquid milk consists of varying proportions of water, fat, protein, bacteria, enzymes and a sugar called lactose. Although favored by home bakers, liquid milk, because of its bulk and perishability, was less common in the bakery.

Instead, bakers used dry milk, which is simply fluid milk from which the water - and in the case of nonfat dry milk, the fat - have been removed, either by vacuum-drying or with heat. Professional bakers prefer heat-treated dry milk because, in addition to evaporating the water, the heat kills any bacteria that are present, as well as destroying the enzymes, both of which can attack dough by weakening the gluten.

In baking, dry milk is used primarily as a crumb tenderizer and sweetener in breads, since yeast can't digest lactose - a fact that has the secondary effects of stabilizing fermentation and promoting browning because lactose caramelizes at the low temperature of 275°F/135°C. In cakes, milk protein binds to the protein in the flour, improving the structure of the crumb.

Juice may be used as the liquid in a recipe. Because fruit juices are acidic, they are probably best used in baked products which have baking soda as an ingredient.

Sour Cream

One thing we could always be sure of finding in grandma's refrigerator was a tub of sour cream, which was a mainstay not only of Tevye's livelihood, but of the Yiddish diet as well. With sliced fruit or berries, slathered on a plate of kreplach (filled dumplings), potatoes - baked, boiled, or grated and fried into latkes - or stirred into a glass of borsht or the sour grass soup called shchav, it was a meal. As a special treat, we would sometimes eat it as shmetanas, a dairy hash of sour cream and pot cheese, garnished with generous pinches of chopped cucumber, radish and scallion.

In Jewish baking, sour cream is what makes a New York cheescake New York cheesecake. In sweet goods like sourcream cakes, short doughs and spritz cookies, its pleasant acidity tenderizes and whitens the crumb. It's important to note that formulas containing sour cream are always leavened with baking soda rather than baking powder, since the acid in the sour cream reacts with the sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) to form CO2; no additional acidifier is necessary.

Sour cream is made by fermenting heavy cream with lactic acid bacteria, which thickens and slightly sours the cream. In the U.S., full-fat sour cream contains from 18% to 20% butterfat and may also contain artificial thickening agents like gelatin, guar gum, carrageenan and/or rennin. A richer version of sour cream, called smetana, can contain as much as 30% butterfat and plays a similar role in the cooking of Central and Eastern Europe.

Cream Cheese

What's a bagel without cream cheese? Unheard of! Ridiculous! And yet, that combination was virtually unknown in Yiddish Eastern Europe, where bagels most often were eaten unadorned and cream cheese was virtually unknown.

In America, however, this mild-tasting, unripened high-fat cheese took Yiddish cooking by storm. On a bagel, it was breakfast. On rye bread with sliced olives, or white bread with jelly, it was lunch. Cream cheese quickly became the centerpiece of New York's best cheese cakes, rudely displacing the baker's cheese that had held that position in Europe. And nothing was - or is - better than rugelach made with cream cheese short dough. Just remember to soften the cream cheese thoroughly by beating it with the flat paddle before you add softer or liquid ingredients; otherwise, it will form lumps that don't dissolve during baking.

Like sour cream, cream cheese is made by fermenting with lactobacillus whole milk to which heavy cream has been added. The difference, however, is that in the manufacture of cream cheese, the fermenting mixture must be heated at a very specific point in the fermentation process to kill the bacteria and allow the coagulation of the cheese. To prolong its shelf life, commercial cream cheeses often contain stabilizers like guar gum and carob gum. According to the FDA, cream cheese must contain at least 33% butterfat (30% in Canada), with a moisture content of not more than 55%, and have a pH range of 4.4 to 4.9. In other countries, the fat content may be considerably higher.

Baker's cheese

Also called hoop cheese, pot cheese, farmer cheese and dry cottage cheese, baker's cheese is a mildly acidic fresh cheese made from skim milk, like cottage cheese and ricotta. It's used widely in Jewish cheesecakes and as a pastry filling. A key characteristic is its dryness: baker's cheese consists entirely of fresh curd, with no salt and little or no liquid added.

Another important characteristic is that it can be frozen and re-frozen without any loss of quality. Unfortunately, baker's cheese is virtually impossible to find at retail, and while no other cheese offers a perfect substitute, you can use Mexican queso fresco or cottage cheese which has been drained overnight in a cheesecloth-lined colander. Another good substitute is made up of equal parts of cottage cheese and well-drained feta cheese.

Thickeners

Starch derived from corn, potatoes, tropical rhizomes and other grains and vegetables have a variety of uses in baking. First and foremost, it's used to thicken fruit fillings and custards, which prevents them from running during baking and keeps them together when the product is cut and served. Secondly, cornstarch in particular can substitute for flour ounce-for-ounce, gram-for-gram, up to 10% - 15% of flour weight when you want to reduce gluten content in order to get a lighter angel food or chiffon cake, for example.

Each type of food starch behaves differently, depending on how it's used.