Week 1: Flour, water, salt, yeast
The first lecture — bakers' percentages, what gluten actually is, and why the straight dough is shaped the way it is
22 February 2027
Flour is 100 %. Every other ingredient in a formula is written as a fraction of it, which is why a bakers’ percentage carries unchanged from one tin loaf to a forty-loaf run, and why two formulas can be compared at a glance instead of converted first.
The rest of the hour is the straight dough: one mix, one bulk ferment, one shape, one proof, one bake, in a line, with nothing held back and nothing added part-way. It is the plainest method on the syllabus, which is the argument for learning it before week 3 pushes hydration past 75 % or week 10 folds butter through the dough.
Quantities and timings belong to the week 1 session page. What you want from the lecture is why 65 % and not 55 %, why the salt is 2 % and not left out, and why the loaf stops growing about ten minutes into the bake.
Outline#
- bakers’ percentages: flour at 100 %, every other ingredient relative to it
- protein content, and what glutenin and gliadin do once they are wet
- hydration at 65 %, and what moves when you go to 55 % or to 80 %
- salt at 2 %: tighter gluten, slower fermentation, and why omitting it shows
- commercial yeast as a controlled variable, and what week 6 trades away
- the straight dough in five steps, with the temperature each one needs
- oven spring, the point at which it stops, and the three usual failures
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor