Very wet bread doughs (up to about 80% hydration, or in other words, quite sticky) are very, very popular these days. Why? Well there are two reasons for that. The first is that wet bread doughs create big holes — or "open crumb", a thing that is very much desired in bread baking circles, since an open crumb is typically accompanied by a springy texture and a light, non-pasty mouthfeel. How does the extra moisture create an open crumb? In part because the wetter dough allows the CO2 bubbles to combine with one another like soap bubbles on the surface of dish water. Also, (and this gets into reason number two) moisture activates gluten.

But I thought you've always said flour + water + AGITATION = gluten! Yes that's true, and it IS true. However very recently, more than a few leading bakers and food science types have been experimenting with very wet, minimal and/or no-knead breads (anyone remember the New York Times' no-knead bread from last year?). How and why do they work so well? Apparently because the extra moisture and slack dough gives gluten molecules extra "wiggle room" to come into alignment with one another. Stiffer doughs require more working to accomplish the same thing.

All of which has led some bread experts to argue that wet, slack bread doughs are more "authentic" than stiffer doughs. How do they know? Well, they don't. However they claim that since bakers of old didn't have the heavy duty mixers we have now, they would have gravitated toward techniques that were less strenuous. I consider that to be extremely dubious reasoning. For one, because it's entirely speculative. Second, because it's hardly fair to try to judge pre-industrial bakers by our modern, lily-livered standards. Sure, commercial baking is a physical job. You have to be strong. But before about a hundred years ago you had to be a positive brute to do it. I doubt the same fellows who chopped the wood, toted the water, and hefted the massive sacks of grain and flour the were required for bread baking back then would have demurred from a little kneading. Though apparently these "experts" would have. Wimps.

I could spend quite a long time expounding on the microbiology of yeast breads (and in fact I often do that, as long-time readers of joepastry.com know). But if the Straight Dough Method had to be reduced to any one thing, that thing would be gluten. For bread making is all about gluten.

And why is that? Gluten, you see, is what's ultimately responsible for raising bread. Oh sure, yeast organisms produce the CO2 gas that gets all those little leavening bubbles started, but if it wasn't for the elastic mesh that is a gluten network, all that gas would just dissipate out the top and sides of the loaf, leaving a crumbly brick of moistened grain behind.

And so we knead, for as I'm constantly repeating, flour + moisture + agitation = gluten. In the case of the Muffin Method, the Biscuit Method and the Creaming Method this is a bad thing for the most part. But where the Straight Dough is concerned, it is a very, very good thing.

Gluten, you see is made up of two types of wheat protein: glutenin and gliadin. Glutenin is the workhorse of the two, being a long-chain molecule that is capable of bonding very tightly to other glutenin molecules — both end-to-end and side-to-side. Gliadin, by comparison, is a curlicue-shaped chain that forms only weak chemical bonds, though it nevertheless has its place in the Straight Dough universe, being a sort of wadded-up spoil-sport that keeps glutenin molecules from bonding to one another too tightly and/or in too many places. Together these two proteins create was is essentially a net that catches the CO2 bubbles the yeast create.

A common misconception among bread bakers is that it's this CO2 that's primarily responsible for raising bread. In fact what really leavens a loaf is steam. Similar to the creaming method, where sugar is driven into fat to create "seed" bubbles, CO2 creates the initial spaces that fill up with steam as the loaf bakes. Not being a physicist (or any type of real scientist for that matter), I can't say I know for sure if CO2 gas expands with heat. It probably does to some degree, though definitely not more than water, which, when converted to steam, occupies about 1600 times more space that it does when it's in liquid form. And so as the loaf heats the bubbles expand, with the stretchy gluten network expanding right along with them until the starch in the dough gelatinizes, the structure sets up, and much of the steam is finally forced out the surface of the loaf. The end result is the light fluffy substance we know as bread.

The last stop on our tour of the Big Five Mixing Methods is what is known as the Straight Dough Method. It is the method by which nearly all bread in the world is made. And if you've ever tried making your own bread before, you'll be familiar with it. It goes like this: a) mix flour, yeast and salt together, b) add water, c) knead until smooth, d) let dough rise until doubled in volume, e) punch dough down, f) shape your bread, g) let shaped loaves rise for a second time until doubled in volume, h) bake your bread. There, easy. The whole thing can be done in about three or four hours.

Only there's a problem, and that is that the unadulterated Straight Dough Method produces pretty lousy tasting bread. Or maybe that's going too far. I should probably say bland bread. Uninteresting bread, devoid of either much crust, much texture or much flavor. Which is why most serious bread bakers never employ it, except as a general framework for more ambitious bread-baking projects. For stand-alone loaves of bread, you can get far more interesting effects by employing starters (what might be called the Starter Method) and sponges (the Sponge Method), which allow the baker to culture large quantities of flavor-producing bacteria before the dough is baked.

All of which is not to say that the Straight Dough method is without its uses. As I said, the vast majority of the world's bread production (i.e. all that which is made outside of the world of hard-core bread fanatics) is made this way. Flat breads are a notable example: from Middle Eastern breads like pita and lavash to Italian pizza and focaccia. And then there are day-to-day items like rolls and buns which, even though they are made via the plain-jane Straight Dough Method, are still markedly better when made at home and from scratch. But more on that later. Let's talk about how the Straight Dough Method actually works...