Bread Baking Terms: An Essential Glossary for Bakers

Once you know these terms, you'll be able to decipher bread recipes.

1. 1. Autolyse: A technique in which you mix flour with water before incorporating the remaining ingredients into the bread dough. An autolyse is especially useful when you’re working with whole-grain flours, as this hydration step softens the bran, making it less likely to damage gluten development.
2. 2. Bulk fermentation: Sometimes called bulk rise or first rise, this stage happens after the bread dough is mixed but before it’s shaped. The “bulk” part is only relevant if you’re making multiple loaves from the same hunk of dough, since the first rise happens before dividing the dough.
3. 3. Crumb: The structure of the bread. When you slice open a loaf, take note of the air pockets. Breads with large, irregular air bubbles, like ciabatta, are said to have an open crumb; those with tiny, regularly spaced air bubbles, such as pain de mie, have a “tight” or closed crumb.
4. 4. Gluten: The water-activated protein that makes dough stretchy. This elasticity allows dough to rise without collapsing. Of all cultivated grains, wheat contains the most gluten (found in the seed’s starchy innard, called endosperm) and is used to make bread flour. Refined white flour is 100 percent endosperm, so it’s higher in gluten than whole-wheat flour.
5. 5. Kneading: The massaging of dough before baking. Kneading turns air pockets into tinier bubbles, creating a more uniform, tighter crumb structure.
6. 6. Oven spring: The rapid expansion dough experiences when first exposed to the high heat of the oven. Scoring bread dough just before baking helps shape this expansion.
7. 7. Proofing: The dough’s second and final rise, after shaping. For free-form boules, this stage happens in a proofing basket (aka banneton). Shaped loaves, like pain de mie and brioche, proof directly in the loaf pans. Long, skinny loaves like baguettes proof in folded linens known as couche.
8. 8. Poolish: A small amount of bread dough with active, bubbling yeast, also called a pre-ferment. Unlike a sourdough starter, a poolish can be made with commercial yeast. It’s also known by the Italian name biga.
9. 9. Seam: Known as a clé (“key”) in French, the seam of a loaf indicates where it’s been folded.
10. 10. Sourdough starter: An acidic community of wild yeasts and bacteria used to leaven bread and add flavor. Also known as levain (“leaven” in French) or pre-ferment. Breads leavened with a sourdough starter are often referred to as sourdough breads.
11. 11. Yeast: A living single-celled fungus found on many foods and in the air, and the primary leavening agent for most breads. Yeast consumes starch and releases carbon dioxide gas as a by-product. When this happens within a gluten network (dough), the carbon dioxide gas fills existing air bubbles. The presence of gluten allows the air bubbles to stretch and expand, creating the light and airy grain paste needed for bread. Commercial yeast can be dried or fresh, while wild yeast typically takes the form of a sourdough starter.

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