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:

    Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Culture is the tacit agreement to let the means of subsistence disappear behind the purpose of existence. Civilization is the subordination of the latter to the former.
    Karl Kraus (1874–1936)

    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)