Sponge and Dough - Purpose

Purpose

The sponge method is used for 3 different reasons: taste, texture and chemistry.

The flavour that is created is dependent on the ingredients used and the fermenting yeast. Just like sourdough, the longer the ferment, the greater the taste difference.

Sponge doughs were used before bread improvers were invented. Texture is partly a byproduct of the chemistry going on in the fermentation, which does several important things such as activate the different enzymes (protease and amylase) needed to leaven bread. Modern grain-harvesting practices have reduced the naturally-occurring enzymes that grains had in former times, a result of no-longer-used grain-storage processes, so today small amounts of enzymes are routinely added to flour by manufacturers, often in the form of malted barley or sprouted grain.

Proteases, dependent on their time of action and concentration levels, soften the gluten in the dough, hydrolyzing peptide bonds, increasing dough extensibility which allows the protein matrix to stretch out as the mix expands, thus leading to increased baked volumes and better structure.

Read more about this topic:  Sponge And Dough

Famous quotes containing the word purpose:

    I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness or feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgement, I consistently can. But you must act.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    Whoever considers morality the main objective of human existence, seems to me like a person who defines the purpose of a clock as not going wrong. The first objective for a clock, is, however, that it does run; not going wrong is an additional regulative function. If not a watch’s greatest accomplishment were not going wrong, unwound watches might be the best.
    Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)

    To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation that is governed by shopkeepers.
    Adam Smith (1723–1790)