Salt and Bread Baking

When it comes to baking, salt plays a significant role in many recipes. From being a flavor enhancer to influencing the yeast in recipes, salt affects the final taste and texture of breads. It’s a basic ingredient in baking like flour, water, yeast, baking soda, baking powder, and sugar. Salt is the shorter moniker we give to “sodium chloride.” In addition to baking needs, salt is important for another reason. Our bodies require salt for the regulation of fluids. This requirement certainly increases when exercise or heat deplete our salt levels.

Salt comes from natural salt licks, the ocean, and salt springs. It also comes from natural brines that exist in different geographic locations. It also occurs as rock salt. Salt used in recipes can be table, coarse, or sea salt. Salt aids in the strengthening of gluten in flour. This helps the dough become more elastic. This also helps the dough become less sticky, and contributes to the dough having a greater resiliency. Salt makes a loaf of bread denser and contributes to a golden-brown crust. It also makes loaves that have a greater tenderness to them. High quality bread texture depends on the right combination of salt-yeast. Aside from breads, without salt the taste of puff pastry will be flatter. The puff pastry will also lack color and have a greasier characteristic to it.

Salt cuts the acidity of certain fruits such as citrus fruits. Salt in a recipe can also mask bitter flavors so they are more palpable. In addition, salt is a natural preservative. It slows the growth of microorganisms that spoil foods. However, salt absorbs water. In climates of the more humid sort and traps moisture from the air. The result is that this can make for a soggier crust, which will shorten the shelf life of the bread. In climates that are drier, salt helps retain water in bread longer. This means a slowed down staling process in this type of climate. In yeast-bread baking, salt works to slow down yeast action. Consider the following:

1. Increasing the amount of salt you use in a recipe means you have to increase the amount of yeast you use. This is if you want your bread to have the same rising time.

2. If you decrease the salt amount, you decrease the amount of yeast you use. However, you don’t have to do this if you want your bread dough to rise faster.

3. Dissolve your salt in the particular liquid of your recipe and then mix it into the flour. Mix it in separately from the proofed yeast mixture you concocted. If you pour your entire salt quotient directly over your proofed yeast mixture, you will harm the yeast and it will stop working as you require.

Help your bread baking efforts by using salt wisely. By understanding how this vital ingredient works, you will ensure you use it in the right measure and ways that your recipe calls for. Let a little salt go a long way in helping you create the quality breads, and other baked goods you crave.

By: Michael E. Ugulini

About the Author:

Michael Ugulini is a full-time freelance writer from Toronto, Ontario. He writes business articles, baking industry articles, SEO articles, feature articles, corporate profiles, newsletter articles, and blogs.