If someone specifies "flour" in a recipe, without other qualifications, this is usually a white wheat flour. However, this has tremendous variation from one part of the United States to another, and even wider variation from one country to another. French and Italian breads are usually made with flours that have between 7 and 9% protein. Most all purpose flours in the United States have around 10% protein. And bread flours have around 14%. As a result, experimentation with a recipe may be necessary to get the results you want.

I choose my oils carefully and for a number of reasons. Are they healthy? Do they enhance the taste, quality, and/or keeping characteristics of the foods I prepare with them? Overall, I feel that we're omnivores, and that we are designed to eat anything that isn't quick enough to get away from us. I believe moderation is the saving of us. If we don't eat too much of any one thing - or too much at all - it's better for us and the environment. Still, I am suspicious of overly processed foods. Solidified liquid oils, such as partially hydrogenated oils, aka shortening, have long been suspect for me. The recent revelations of the dangers of trans-fatty acids confirmed my prejudices in this area. I find it easier to avoid suspect foods. So, overall, I like foods that people have been eating for hundreds - or better yet, thousands - of years. Are the newer ways of solidifying liquid oils better than hydrogenation? I'm content to avoid these new foods and wait for more research to be done. None of this means I'm a neo-luddite. I keep up on trends and research, at least at a layman level.

Getting back to baking, oils are added to bread to improve the crumb structure, the rise, and the storage qualities of the bread. Dr. Emily Buehler is a baker who first trained first as a chemist. She talks about oils at some length in her marvelous book, "Bread Science" which available through her web page twobluebooks.com. Dr. Buehler cites a number of studies which examine how the chemistry of dough and dough development work. The current theory is that lipids strenghten the bubble walls in dough. Interestingly, one study which showed solid oils did more to improve rise than liquid oils. Further, it was the state of the oil that mattered. One of the tests in that study used the same oil in liquid and solid states and the solid oil helped the dough more.

While oils do improve the crumb and keeping qualities of breads, at times the improvement in those areas has a cost in others. Many breads are lean breads, and if oil is added the bread flavor changes. Some well meaning people add oil or milk to baguettes. The result is a different bread, and usually an inferior one. Baguettes should have layers of flavor - rich extravagant flavors from fermentation, caramelization flavors from the proper baking of the crust, and strong wheat flavors. Baguettes tend to lose these flavors when oils and/or milk are added and become long, skinny pieces of WonderBread. While the addition of oil can be beneficial, it is hardly a panacea and the use of oil has to be in keeping with the stype of the bread.

Oils cause lots of debate. Here are some common questions/issues.

Should oils be added at the start of mixing dough, or at the end? If your bread is turning out right, you're doing it right. If not, try switching what you're doing. I've had it make a big difference in the results, but what works "best" seems to vary from bread to bread.

If I add oil to a recipe, how should I change the recipe? and What about switching from solid to liquid, or liquid to solid oils? In general, a good starting point is to substitute oils for water, on either a volume for volume or weight for weight basis. If you put in 1/4 cup of butter, use 1/4 cup less of water or milk. Liquid and solid oils are pretty much interchangeable in bread baking as far as dough consistency goes. Again, if you add oil to a bread, you have substantially changed the bread, and not always for the better. You may find you prefer the bread without the added oil.

What kind of oil should I use? Following my hundreds - or better yet thousands - of years test, my preference is for lard, butter, and olive oil. Sadly, it's hard to get good lard these days, so I have avoided it. Many pastry chefs say there is nothing that compares with lard, so I suppose I should work with it some more. Unsalted butter works very nicely in many breads, and gives pastries a nice richness. And then there's olive oil.

Of all oils, olive oil is my favorite for all around cooking, although it is not a good choice for high temperature frying. Olive oil is recommended by many health experts because of its properties. It also gets me a fair number of upset emails. Olive oil? In Bread? Isn't it too strong? I've been told, "it's not appropriate" in a number of foods, such as Challah and granola. Now, please note I didn't say "extra virgin olive oil." I use EVOO (to use Rachel Ray's acronym) in some breads such as focaccia and ciabatta where I want the flavor that EVOO adds. However, there are a host of non-virgin olive oils that have most, if not all, the dietetic and culinary properties of EVOO without having an overwhelming taste. Many of these oils are quite reasonably priced. And they work just fine in Challah and granola. Or any place you want a mild oil. Some people ask why I use olive oil instead of Canola Oil. Canola Oil doesn't meet my hundreds of years test. And, from what I have read, it is much more processed than olive oil and some people are concerned about it. So, I prefer the late pressing, second pressing or even pomace olive oils for my daily oils. Check with me in a few hundred years. Maybe I'll have reconsidered oils by then.

A bit more discussion of starters and sponges. First, there are some equivalancies to be aware of:

Mother = chef - it only depends on the consistency - a chef is dough-like, while a mother is batter-like. Most people in the USA ignore the subtleties and just call this starter.

Sour = levain - again it depends on the consistency of the starter - a Sour batter-like, levain dough-like. The difference between these terms and the ones above is that they represent the term that indicates that the starter is activated.

Chef, levain, biga natural, mother, and sour contain only natural yeast cultures.

All of the above - biga, biga natural, chef, levain, mother, poolish, and sour are often referred to as either starters or sponges.

I had long thought that if your water is safe to drink, you could almost certainly make good bread, and even good sourdough bread, with it. However, as I learned, there are further issues.

The first is chlorination. While chlorine can interfere with the growth of yeast and sourdough bacteria, in practice, this is a very unusual occurrence. I have started, maintained, fed and used sourdough starters with chlorinated water in a number of different cities and had no problems resulting from that use of chlorinated water. However, some water systems use chloramines which are a more persistent form of chlorine and I have received some emails suggest that chloramines are very hard on the micro-organisms bakers depend on. Your water supplier can tell you how they treat the water they supply you.

Water hardness is a significant issue for some bakers. A friend commented that sometimes his dough is slacker than other days, and on those days he comments that "the water must be wetter than usual today." This is a sign of very soft water. Water hardness, or how much mineral content is dissolved in the water, is measured in parts per million (ppm) or milligrams per liter (mg/l). Both are, if my math is working, the same measure. You can call your water supplier and ask them about the hardness of the water. If they can't tell you, you can get inexpensive test kits from swimming pool supply companies. If your water is the 50 to 150 ppm range, your water is ideal for bread making. If your water has a lower level of hardness, it is soft water. If it has a higher level, it is hard water.

If you have soft water, your dough will lack cohesiveness. If you find yourself following recipes from different sources and always finding the dough is too soft, too slack and won't hold shape there is a chance you have soft water. There are a number of solutions, and (after our last move) we are investigating the matter. The simplest is to use a bit more salt to toughen the gluten.

If you have hard water, your dough will lack extensibility. There are a number of solutions for this, the easiest is to use softened, but not completely deminieralized, water.

The last issue is pH, or the acidity/alkalinity of your water. Dough prefers to be made with water that is neutral to slightly acidic. Alakaline water causes dough to be very soft and unmanageable. You can use a hot tub or swimming pool test kit to determine the pH of your water.

If it seems you are having water related problems, you might look into how your local water is treated, and try some bottled spring water and see if the problems go away. You do not want to use distilled or reverse osmosis treated water because these treatments remove all minerals from the water and you do need some mineral content in your water. If the problems go away, you might look at how the bottled water differs from your tap water and whether you can make your tap water more like the bottled water. At this time (Tuesday, April 15, 2008) we are investigating how to ameliorate the very soft and alkaline water in our new home and will post updates here when we have more to report

No discussion of water would be complete without a pointer to information about water's evil twin, dhmo. Warning - reading this material could completely change your life!