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Salt In Bread Dough

Salt In Bread Dough — a community recipe on Potlikkr.

Ingredients

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Method (preview)

1. 1

   Salt is such a minor ingredient in bread that few bakers stop to think about its exact role in bread-making. However, sometimes focusing a light on a seemingly unimportant aspect of bread-making can illuminate the whole bread-making process. Such is the case with salt. Salt exerts an influence on almost every stage of bread-making, and every aspect of bread. Why is salt one of bread's cornerstones? What importance does it have beyond being a flavoring element? This article will attempt to explain and clarify some of the chemistry governing salt's interactions with bread dough.

2. 2

   Salt's primary purpose in bread is to evoke and enhance the bread's flavor. To most Americans, saltless bread is insipid and virtually inedible, but adding only approximately 2% of the flour weight in salt to the average bread formula manifestly changes the perception of bread's flavor, eliciting the full spectrum of complex flavor notes, including a sweetness that would be otherwise absent. It is interesting that the addition of salt to bread is a relatively new preference. Medieval bread was almost never salted because salt was very expensive and difficult to procure; thus, salt-less bread was preferred. According to Professor Raymond Calvel, professor emeritus of l'Ecole Francaise de Meunerie, French bread formulas started to include salt only at the end of the eighteenth century.