I remember that my first experiments with baking, especially sweet ones, for a long time ended in a complete fiasco. And all because I, feeling the salty taste vividly enough, decided: why do I need it in the dough at all, especially in the dessert one? Down with the toadstool!
And the dough answered me:
- Experimenting? Oh well! Right now, I'll give you the dirty trick!
And it gave out. Moreover, the list of dirty tricks started from a completely nasty (sugary) taste and ended with a loss of shape. Both unleavened dough and yeast dough were wise.
Why is that?
Well, I won't say anything about the fact that our salt, after all, neutralizes too pronounced sweetness and helps to emphasize other notes - probably everyone knows about it.
In addition, salt helps in crust formation. Yes, for me it was a surprise myself, for a long time I believed that sugar was more responsible for the formation of a golden brown crust - but no, it turned out that without salt the crust would not work either.
Salt inhibits fermentation bacteria. On the one hand, this is bad (the dough rises more slowly), on the other hand, it is good - the risk of over-fermenting the dough is reduced.
Salt helps the proper development of gluten in the dough - that is, without salt, the consistency of the dough will be "wrong", "wrong". That is, if you, as it were, prepared everything "as it should", carefully observing the dosage of almost all components of the dough, and you have it sticky, disgusting, strives to stick firmly to dishes, hands and all the surroundings, see if you calculated the mass correctly salt?
Another salt nuance - salt whitens the dough. Yes Yes exactly. True, it bleaches it very interestingly, if you want to bleach the crumb of the finished product, then salt must be added at the end of the batch. If you add salt while preparing the dough, it will lose its bleaching properties, but the product will keep its shape better.
Amusing? And how.
But that's not all.
The amount of salt in bakers is calculated using a simple formula: if the product is not sweet, then the ratio of salt to flour is 20 grams of salt per kilogram of flour. If it is sweet, then we reduce the amount to 15-18 grams per kilogram of flour. However, this is only suitable if you are kneading the dough the old fashioned way - by hand, or if you have kitchen kneading equipment that works at low speeds (i.e. speeds). If you have something close to the power of industrial kneaders, then the amount of salt will have to increase (do not ask why, this is just an axiom that bakers repeat from time to time time).
By the way: it is better to use only finely ground salt for the dough. Coarse salt may not completely dissolve, which, again, will affect the quality of the dough, and also salt that has not completely dissolved will give spots on the crust.
Such are the things.