Basic Food Safety

On occasion, I run across recipes posted on websites or blogs that do not reflect proper instructions on food safety and handling. This can be a serious issue. While the authors of recipes may know about food safety themselves, a novice following poor instructions could make themselves and their loved ones very sick! During the required Level 1 FoodSafe Course at NWCAV, we learned that improper food handling causes over 95% of all food borne illnesses in the food industry. The most common cause is the improper cooling of foods.

Bacteria multiply rapidly when food is left at temperatures between 4-60º C (40-140º F). To prevent harmful bacterial growth, you must either hold hot food between 60-74º C (140-165º F) where most bacteria die, or bring the temperature of food down as quickly as possible so that it ranges between 0-4º C (32-40º F). Most bacteria stay alive in this temperature range but they do not multiply rapidly.

Keep hazardous foods such as meat, poultry, dairy and egg products, fish and seafood, cooked vegetables and cereals out of the Danger Zone. Separate large amounts of leftovers into small, shallow containers for quicker cooling. They can also be placed over an ice bath and stirred frequently to cool. Refrigerate as soon as possible.

Even during the preparation stages of foods, keep these temperature zones in mind. For example, when you make ice cream, ensure that your mixture is cooled down rapidly after cooking and before churning. Any temperature in the Danger Zone will turn eggs and dairy into a breeding ground for disaster.

Tagged as: [ bacteria basics boiling danger foodsafe freezing temperature zone ]

A Sticky Dough is a Happy Dough

I like the fact that in class we are not using Kitchen Aids for the mixing and kneading of doughs. By doing everything by hand, we are learning to identify when a dough has been kneaded enough just by feeling it. When people move on to using machines in big production kitchens to make large quantities, they will be able to look and touch the product to determine when it is done. What has amazed me most during this past week of bread-making is that most of the doughs that we have kneaded by hand are extremely sticky initially but then come together as they are kneaded more. Even the end result is something stickier than I'm used to. The home baker will undoubtedly feel the urge to add additional flour at the onset to make the dough more manageable to knead?but this is actually the worst thing they could do.

There is a lot of science behind bread making and I have a greater appreciation for the artisan baker. Formulas were created to calculate the Desired Dough Temperature (DDT). This is the precise temperature that dough should be at after kneading and before resting. It is not something that is found in recipes on the web or in many cookbooks but rewards professionals with excellent results. Accurate gluten development, hydration, fermentation, and proofing times have to be understood to create an optimal product.

For most lean doughs (ones that have very little or no fat in them), the DDT is between 75°F to 80°F (24°C to 27°C). For enriched doughs (ones that have more butter, milk, eggs, etc.), the DDT is slightly higher to keep the fats soft while kneading.

So how do you find a DDT? The only temperature you can control in a recipe is the temperature of the water that you are adding. To find the DDT for a dough, you have to calculate the sum temperatures of certain factors: room temperature, flour temperature, mixer friction (the heat generated by mixing/kneading)¹, and pre-dough (sour dough, etc.). If your recipe includes 3 of the aforementioned factors, you multiply the desired dough temperature by 3. If there are 4 factors, multiply by 4 and so on. Once you have multiplied the factors, you subtract the sum temperature of the room, flour, mixer friction, pre-dough, etc. The value left is the temperature that your water should be at when adding it to your recipe.

It is quite amazing that when you follow these calculations, and after kneading for the appropriate amount of time, that the DDT will be spot-on. The benefit of having a DDT is that the yeast will be most active during this resting period and will produce gases which will be trapped between the network of gluten strands, creating a beautiful rise in the oven.

To calculate DDT (example):


What is also interesting to me is that you can take roughly the same ingredients (flour, yeast, water, salt, butter) and form such incredibly different products from the same things just by altering the amounts, the proofing time, the baking technique, etc. Click here for more pictures of the finished products.


¹ To calculate mixer friction multiply the total kneading time by 2 (when kneading by hand). Fahrenheit should be used when calculating DDT.

Tagged as: [ baking bread ddt dough gluten kneading temperature tips ]