Beginner's Guide to Bread Making - Part 1

While Google is resourceful when it comes to looking up for information and recipes, there are so many different types of recipes and methods out there for bread making that it can come across overwhelming to a beginner baker.

Fresh yeast vs dried yeast, different types of flour, high gluten vs low gluten, what does it all means and how and when do we use them?

While there are many fancy words in a baker's dictionary, the basic formula for a bread remains the same, bread making is actually not as complicated as it seemed!

credits to @kiboka  via unsplash.com

Baking math's - the basic formula you need to know

To make a good old fashioned "Plain White Bread", the three main ingredients we need are bread flour (high protein flour), yeast, and water.

The next step you need to know is the recipe ratio, and that is where the basic maths steps in, just remember this:

For every kilogram (kg) of the total flour weight, you need 60% liquid and 1% of dried yeast or 10% of fresh yeast. To translate that into a simple figure for better understanding:

Example: 

Bread Flour (High Protein)    ..... 1000g

Water (60% of flour weight)  .....   600g

Dried Yeast (1% of flour wt) .....     10g     

                            Total weight:      1610g  

(if you're using fresh/wet yeast, it is 10% of flour weight equivalent to 100g) 

Sounds simple?

From that basic recipe, you can adjust it according to your own preference. Here is another example using our all natural bread mix from IREKS that you can try! 

See also: Bread Recipe - Sovital Bread 

As explained in the calculation above, the total flour weight = 50% Bread Flour (High Protein Flour) + 50% IREKS Sovital Mix (a multigrain bread mix) = 1000g 

From that 1000g, we calculated 63% (630g) of water and 1% (10g) of dried instant yeast to be used. 

As a rule of thumb, the ratio of flour: water: yeast is the backbone of the bread and anything additional e.g. butter, dried fruits & nuts, sugar are secondary. 

Bread making is as much of a science as it is an art!

Don't be afraid to experiment in your kitchen, trial and error, find the perfect concoction that satisfies your tastebuds.