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:
“Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“We need not only a purpose in life to give meaning to our existence but also something to give meaning to our suffering. We need as much something to suffer for as something to live for.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“With the breakdown of the traditional institutions which convey values, more of the burdens and responsibility for transmitting values fall upon parental shoulders, and it is getting harder all the time both to embody the virtues we hope to teach our children and to find for ourselves the ideals and values that will give our own lives purpose and direction.”
—Neil Kurshan (20th century)