Lab Group Data: Bread (Group 5)

This data is for Lab Group 5, which consists of Lily Petersen, Oscar Hayes, Bianca Lott, and Cole Kniep. For this lab, we baked three different breads in a pot over hot coals and recorded our observations regarding the temperatures of the pot and the breads, as well as the taste, smell and textures of the breads after being baked.

Bread 1: Simple Bread Loaf

The first bread that we baked was Cato’s Kneaded Bread (#74), which is a mix of approximately 250g bread flour, 5g salt, and 175g of water. Some initial observations we noticed when mixing and kneading the dough were that the bread was fairly wet, meaning that we needed to add a lot more flour than indicated, and that kneading with latex gloves on was terrible, as the dough just stuck to the gloves. Once we switched to kneading with our bare hands, the dough came together fairly quickly.

During this time, we also created a little pit with coals for our cast-iron pot and started heating the pot up in preparation for the bread. We repeatedly recorded the temperature with a laser thermometer throughout this process, starting at 1:39 PM, and added the bread in at 1:56 PM, once we had determined that the pot was consistently hot enough. The results of our temperature recording until we pulled the bread off of the fire at 2:39 PM are graphed below.

Time (PM)	Temperature of Pot (ºF)	Temperature of Bread (ºF)	Notes
1:39	196.2
1:45	222
1:47	559
1:50	763
1:52	528
1:53	405
1:55	576
1:56	435
1:58	305		Added bread to pot
1:59	399
2:00	558
2:02	364.1
2:05	426
2:07	510
2:10		150
2:13	550
2:14	540
2:15		129
2:17	320
2:20		131
2:21	372
2:23	322
2:27	443
2:28		155
2:31	534
2:32		175
2:34	368
2:36	401
2:39		198	Removed bread from fire

It was surprisingly hard to keep a consistent temperature during this process, which necessitated constantly moving the pot on and off the coals, accounting for the fluctuations of temperature in the data. One potential reason for this is that we started out with mostly-burnt logs as our coals, rather than smaller coals, making temperature control much less precise than what we were able to achieve later.

When we took the first bread off of the fire, it was a golden-brown color, made a hollow sound at the base when tapped, was slightly springy, and felt surprisingly heavy. Because there was no leaven in the bread, it was very dense. However, the taste was shockingly okay, with one group mate describing the bread as tasting “like a Sayles jumbo pretzel”. The bread was, however, greatly improved by the addition of honey.

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Bread 2: Flour and Cheese Loaf

While we were still baking Loaf 1, we started mixing the dough for loaf number 2, which was Cato’s Libum (#75), a loaf intended for religious ceremonies, created by mixing 325g of feta cheese, 165g of bread flour, and one egg, with a layer of bay leaves underneath to prevent the bread from burning too badly in the pot. Our observations for this dough were that it felt dry and crumbly, and came apart very easily. We started baking this loaf at 2:42 PM, and it stayed in the pot until 3:39 PM. We again recorded the temperatures of the pot and the bread, but this time, we also decided to record the temperature of the coals on the top and bottom of the pot, as shown below. 

Time (PM)	Temperature of Pot (ºF)	Temperature of Bread (ºF)	Temperature of Top Coals (ºF)	Temperature of Bottom Coals (ºF)	Notes
2:42	390				Bread added to pot
2:55		86
2:56				415
2:57			450
3:00			489	450
3:01		103.9
3:02	219
3:07	266
3:08		111
3:12	320
3:17		155
3:21		180
3:26		194
3:36		166
3:39		180			Bread removed from pot

Throughout this process, we continued adding coals to the top and bottom of the pot, which resulted in a slightly more consistent pot temperature. We pulled our bread off of the fire slightly earlier than we might have otherwise, as we still needed to get our sourdough loaf on, and were conscious of the time. This meant that the final product was pale, not crispy, and still slightly raw in the middle. It tasted like feta and was more crumbly than our previous loaf of dough, but the flavor was somewhat improved by the addition of honey and poppy seeds.

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Bread 3: Sourdough Loaf

Our third loaf of bread was the sourdough, which had the same ingredients as the first loaf, but with the addition of leaven. It had also been rested for a while before baking, allowing for the dough to rise. With this bread, we found that we needed to rotate the pot frequently so that the coals could heat both sides evenly. We again recorded our temperature from adding the bread to the pot at 3:43 PM to removing it from the pot at 4:06 PM, shown below.

Time (PM)	Temperature of Pot (ºF)	Temperature of Bread (ºF)	Notes
3:43	650		Added bread to pot
3:48	438
3:52	449
3:55	487
3:59	456	130
4:03		193
4:05	393
4:06		209.5	Removed bread from pot

As can be seen from the above data, we were able to keep the temperature much more consistent for the sourdough, likely because we used small coals to make more subtle temperature changes than we had previously been able to. We were also much more relaxed by the time we made this loaf, and did not feel the need to check in as frequently, because we were satisfied that the bread would bake well even without a super high degree of precision. 

The sourdough bread itself was definitely the best of the three loaves we made. It had a solid, unburnt bottom crust, because we made sure to spread the bay leaves further than the radius of the dough when we put it in the pot, to allow for the radius of the bread to expand as it rose. The top crust was soft, and the bread was very open inside, with lots of air in the crumb structure. The taste of the bread was more acidic than anticipated, which could have been a result of the specific type of grain used for the bread flour, compared to the standard bread flour we were used to.

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Grain Grinding

While we were making the bread, we also each got the chance to attempt to grind grain into flour on the metate. Some group members’ thoughts on this experience were that it was a lot of work for not much reward, and that it was shocking “how little flour was produced from such a time consuming and physically demanding process.” According to one group member:

It was difficult to see how little progress was made with the time spent. Unlike the spinning process, which was also frustrating at times, there was so little immediate reward to see progress. Added to that, with the wind on the island, I believe most of the best flour simply blew away each time the batch was reset.