Loaf 6: the oil comes out

This is Loaf 6 of 16, and the one thing that changed from Loaf 5 is the oil: 80 g out, nothing in.

Four things never move anywhere in this course, and they do not move here. 400 g flour. 8 g salt, which is 2%. One 9 x 5 inch (23 x 13 cm) loaf pan. An oven at 375°F / 190°C. Every percentage below is a percentage of that 400 g of flour.

What is left in the bowl is flour, water, salt and yeast. That is the whole ingredient list of most of the bread eaten on earth, and this is the first loaf in the course to reach it.

The formula

Frozen: 400 g flour · 8 g salt (2%) · 9 x 5 in pan · 375°F / 190°C · Hydration: 60% (240 g water on 400 g flour)

Read the hydration line before you touch anything

60%. The same 60% as Loaf 1, which was a banana bread batter you poured out of a bowl.

That is not a misprint and it is the single most useful fact on this page. Loaf 1 and Loaf 6 carry identical water on identical flour. One of them pours and one of them fights you. The difference was never water, it was the 41% sugar and 20% fat that Loaf 1 had and this loaf does not.

So when this dough comes out stiff, and it will, you have not made a mistake and you are not short of water. Water arrives at Loaf 9, deliberately, as its own single change. Taking it early costs you that loaf and teaches you nothing.

Method

1. Stir the flour, salt and yeast together dry. Add the lukewarm water.
2. Stir, then finish by squeezing the dough together with one hand until no dry flour is left, about 2 minutes. It will be stiff and it will fight you.
3. Bulk rise in the bowl at 75°F / 24°C to the gate below, about 2 hours.
4. Press it into the greased pan, corner to corner. Second rise about 45 minutes at 75°F / 24°C.
5. Bake 40 to 45 minutes at 375°F / 190°C. Cool on a rack at room temperature for at least 1 hour.

Step 2 is the change in practice. A spoon can no longer get this dough together. Your hand can.

Why this works

Fat coats flour proteins and stops them linking up with each other. That is not a metaphor, it is the literal meaning of the word shortening: fat shortens the gluten strands, and gluten is the stretchy protein network that flour builds once it is wet.

Take the fat away and nothing is coating anything. The strands run long and continuous, and a long continuous network behaves differently in three ways you can see and taste:

• The crumb goes from tender to chewy. Short strands snap when you bite them. Long ones resist, and resistance is what people mean by chew.
• The crust goes from soft to crisp. Fat kept the surface pliable. Without it, the outside dries and hardens into a real crust.
• The dough goes from cooperative to tight. Oil was lubricating every surface inside the bowl, including your spoon. Nothing is lubricating anything now.

That third point is the one that blindsides people, because it arrives the moment you add the water and it feels like a mistake rather than a result.

How you know it's ready

The bulk gate is the same one you already know, but you read it differently here.

The dough has risen by half, the top is domed, and a wet fingertip pressed into it leaves a dent that fills back slowly rather than snapping shut. At 75°F / 24°C that is usually about 2 hours, and the clock is context for the look, never the instruction.

The one adjustment: at 60% with no fat in it, this dough barely jiggles when you shake the bowl. Every previous loaf wobbled. This one does not, and a still bowl is not an underproofed bowl. Trust the dent, not the wobble.

The second rise is done when the dough has come up to about ¾ inch / 2 cm below the rim. Bake to an internal temperature of 205 to 210°F / 96 to 99°C.

What goes wrong

The failure this loaf introduces: the baker adds water.

The one cause: reading "stiff" as "dry."

They are not the same thing. Dry means there is flour in the bowl that never got wet. Stiff means all the flour got wet and the dough is simply tight, which is what 60% hydration with no fat in it is supposed to feel like. This is the stiffest dough in the whole course, and it is the same hydration as the banana bread at Loaf 1.

The fix is technique, not water. Stop stirring and start squeezing: push the dough against the side of the bowl with your palm, fold it over, squeeze again. Two minutes of that gets every speck of flour into the mass. Let the bowl look rough and ragged when you cover it, because Loaf 7 is where smooth arrives, and it arrives by kneading, not by pouring.

When it worked

A modest, slightly squat loaf with a matte, chewy crust and a close, tight crumb. It tastes of wheat and salt and a little of fermentation, and nothing else, because there is nothing else in it.

It is unmistakably bread. It took six loaves, zero equipment beyond a bowl and a pan, and you now know from your own hands that bread is not made soft by water, it is made soft by fat and sugar, and that this loaf has neither on purpose.

Bake it twice successfully before you move to Loaf 7. One good loaf is luck. Two is a skill.