A comparison of common bread-making mistakes

Sourdough vs. yeast

If you are like me, you have probably read many recipes and watched an equally high number of bread-making videos online, in order to discover those little secrets that will help you to take your bread-making technique to another level.

However, you should always be careful not to confuse bread-making with sourdough with bread-making with yeast.

Although the final goal of using either sourdough or yeast is supposedly the same, i.e. make a loaf of bread, they are two very different approaches, when it comes to bread-making temperatures and times.

If you ignore this fact, you will never be able to make the perfect loaf of bread that you’ve always dreamed of, because you try to mix two different techniques that cannot be used together.

Bulk fermentation (first rise) vs. final fermentation (final rise or proofing)

Confusing bulk fermentation with final fermentation is another mistake that beginner bread-makers usually make.

Although fermentation is virtually the same process that takes place during these stages, first rise and final rise are distinct from each other, and are both essential to make a loaf of bread that looks and tastes nice.

Some people who make bread for the very first time may be tempted to skip one of these stages, because they believe that it is not necessary to use them both.

This will have a very negative effect on the quality characteristics of bread, when it finally comes out of the oven.

Cool water vs. warm water

Water is one of the three essential ingredients that you need to make bread, the other two being flour, and yeast/sourdough.

If you choose dry yeast, you need to activate it, before using it.

Dry yeast will not become active, unless you dissolve it in warm water.

However, you may be able to get away with using cool (but not cold) water to make bread, if you provide the necessary heat to the yeast in another way at a later stage, for example, if you use an electric mixer to mix your ingredients, and during the mixing process, the ingredients are warmed up.

Warm water vs. hot water

Similarly to using warm, rather than cold, water, you need to make sure that you use warm water, and not hot.

While warm water plays a key role in activating dry yeast, hot water will have the opposite effect, and literally kill the yeast.

You shouldn’t forget that yeasts are living organisms, and therefore, you should treat them as such.

Humans, for example, can live and flourish within a certain range of temperatures.

The same applies to yeasts, and in fact, any living organism.

This means that yeasts need the right environment to become active (in case of dry yeast), grow, and “do their job”, when it comes to bread-making, i.e. help the dough rise by releasing carbon dioxide as they use the sugars that are contained in flour as food.

Plain white flour vs. wholemeal flour

When it comes to baking bread, white flour is believed to be the type of flour that is the easiest to handle, in terms of kneading, bulk fermentation, proofing, and end result of the baked loaf.

Thus, you should be aware of the different behavior of white flour, compared to whole-wheat flour, and you shouldn’t change any of the steps of the specific baking technique and recipe that you use.

For example, if your bread didn’t rise that much, or ended up more dense, because you used whole-wheat flour, instead of white flour, as it was originally instructed in the recipe, you shouldn’t try to change the ingredient proportions, because this would make things even worse.

Kneading vs. not kneading

Kneading is a process, during which, you apply force with your fists to help the gluten that is contained in the dough to make the dough more elastic.

Kneading for at least 10 minutes is strongly recommended, if you want to get maximum results from gluten working on the dough.

On the other hand, you can find many cooking recipes and videos, where no kneading is used in the bread-making process.

There are subtle details in each process, i.e. kneading and not kneading, which make the difference.

However, if you try to mix and match the two processes, it is most likely that your bread-making effort will be a disaster.

Sources and further reading:

7 mistakes every beginner makes when baking bread

The biggest mistakes everyone makes when baking bread

Yest dough recipe - why COLD water?

Yeast fundamentals

Bread science 101

Whole-wheat vs. white flour: What’s the difference?

Kneading

The 12 Most Common Bread Baking Mistakes to Avoid

Bread Baking Mistakes Everyone Makes