i wann aknow what bread is made of!

-- Anonymous, April 24, 2001

Answers

Hi Todd. It kind of depends what bread you are thinking about. For bread you buy in the store, you can read the list of ingredients on the label to find out. You will see lots of things there that these companies put into their bread. But bread has been made for thousands of years all over the world without all kinds of chemicals. Look and see if you van find a cookbook and look at the bread recipes.If you don't have one, here are some ideas I have about bread.

To make what people call "bread" you need some kind of grain, which is usually ground into flour. That grain could be corn or wheat or oats or barley or rye, for example and sometimes these grains are mixed together. Grain is a little seed that grows on a tall grass, usually. Sometimes people don't have grain where they live or they like different tastes, so they grind up special roots, or nuts or other parts of the plant to make flour. Then the flour is mixed with a liquid to make a dough. That could be milk, water , juice, etc.

Most bread also has something in it to make it puff up and become light when it bakes. This is something to make the bread "rise" or puff up and get light.. There are several things that bakers use to help the bread to "rise". Usually, it is something called yeast, which is actually an clump of tiny organisms which eat the sugar that is in the dough (if you add a little sugar or honey or molasses or something sweet to the dough, it helps the yeast do its job.) The yeast gives off a gas when it digests the sugar and this gas gets trapped between little particles of the dough and blows it up like lots of teeny balloons. (So teeny you usually can't see them.)It you look at a piece of bread, you will notice little holes. This is from the yeast sending off little bubbles. People also can use salt or something called baking powder to help the bread to rise, or sometimes they use something called a starter, or a sponge (not the kind of sponge you use for cleaning!). This is like a little already started living group of organisms who are just waiting to eat some flour and help the bread to rise. Usually, you let the dough sit in a bowl ion a warm place for an hour of so and you can watch it puff up.

Then you gently punch it down, punching all of the gas out of it and then you "Knead" it. I think this is the most fun part of making bread, but it is all pretty fun. To knead bread you kind if push down on it and push it away from you on the table, until it gets nice and shiney and like elastic.

Some breads are made with out rising much at all and they don't use yeast or anything. They are usually pretty flat and often heavy. People add all kinds of things to make the bread taste good, or different. They add raisins and nuts and other fruits like bananas and apples and berries.They add cheese sometimes and different flavorings, like pepper and onions and spices like cinnamon. Often, they add eggs to the dough before they bake it also.

Then they bake the dough in an pan in the oven, where it rises and as it heats up, theyeast dies and the air gets trapped between the crumbs and makes the bread nice and light and tender. I hope that you will try baking bread one day. I t can be lots of fun! Let me know if you have any more questions, ahulani

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2001