Loaf 5: the egg comes out

This is Loaf 5 of 16, and the one thing that changed from Loaf 4 is the egg: it comes out, and exactly the 75 g of water it was carrying goes back 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, which is the only reason you can compare one loaf to the next.

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)

The hydration does not move

Read that hydration line twice, because this is the loaf where people expect it to change and it does not.

A whole egg is about 75% water. Two large eggs out of the shell weigh 100 g, and 75 g of that 100 g is water. So when the egg leaves, the loaf loses 75 g of water, and the added water goes from 165 g at Loaf 4 to 240 g here to put that water straight back. Total water on 400 g of flour: still 240 g. Still 60%.

What actually left the loaf is the other 25 g. That is the whole of the change, and it is why this loaf exists.

Method

1. Stir the flour, salt and yeast together dry. Add the lukewarm water and the oil.
2. Stir for 2 minutes, until no dry flour is left. Still no kneading.
3. Bulk rise in the bowl at 75°F / 24°C to the gate below, about 1½ to 2 hours.
4. Scrape it into the greased pan and level the top. 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.

"Bulk rise" is just the first rise, the one that happens in the bowl before the dough goes anywhere near the pan.

Why this works

Those 25 g of egg solids were doing two jobs, and both of them are now gone.

The first job was structure. Egg is mostly protein, and egg protein sets when it gets hot, the same way the white of a fried egg goes from clear to firm. In Loaf 4 that set alongside the gluten, so the crumb had two scaffolds holding it up instead of one. Gluten is the stretchy protein network that flour forms once it is wet, and from this loaf on it is the only scaffold you have.

The second job was emulsifying. Egg yolk carries lecithin, a substance that lets fat and water mix and stay mixed instead of separating. Lecithin also slips between the flour proteins and keeps the crumb soft for longer. Take it out and the crumb goes a shade coarser, a shade drier, and it stales faster.

There is a third effect and it is the one your hands will notice. Egg protein thickens a dough the way it thickens a custard. Without it, the same 240 g of water has nothing to hold on to but flour, so the dough sits looser in the bowl than Loaf 4 did at identical hydration. Slacker dough, same water. Remember that sentence for the next section.

How you know it's ready

Same bulk gate as Loaf 4, and it is something you look at, not something you time.

The dough has risen by half, not doubled. The top is domed rather than flat. Press a wet fingertip in and the dent fills back slowly instead of snapping shut. Where the dough meets the side of the bowl the surface looks glossy and blistered with small bubbles. At 75°F / 24°C that usually lands around 1½ to 2 hours, but the clock is describing somebody else's kitchen and the dent is describing yours.

The second rise is done when the dough has climbed to about ¾ inch / 2 cm below the rim of the pan.

Bake to an internal temperature of 205 to 210°F / 96 to 99°C, a touch hotter than the previous loaves, because there is no egg protein left to set the crumb early and the middle needs the extra heat to finish.

What goes wrong

The failure this loaf introduces: the baker adds flour.

The one cause: judging a stirred dough by how sticky it feels instead of by what it weighs.

This dough is slacker than Loaf 4 at exactly the same hydration, for the reason in the section above. Your hand reads that slackness as "too wet," a handful of flour goes in to fix it, and the fix is the failure. Flour added by eye is the one change that quietly breaks every loaf after this one, because from here on you are no longer baking the formula you think you are baking, and every comparison you make later in the course is against the wrong baseline.

The fix is to add nothing. Use a wet spoon and a wet hand, and let the bowl look rough. Rough is correct at Loaf 5.

When it worked

A little shorter than Loaf 4, with a crumb that is more open and more irregular. The flavour is cleaner and more wheaty, because the round richness the egg was contributing is no longer sitting on top of it. It is a lighter, plainer, more honest loaf.

It also stales faster, so eat it on day one. That is not a defect, it is the lecithin's absence showing up on your counter, and it is the clearest lesson this loaf has to give.

Bake it twice successfully before you move to Loaf 6. One good loaf is luck. Two is a skill.