Wheat flour

Equal weights, cooked together. The fat coats each grain so the flour thickens without lumping.

Cooked flour and fat, then milk poured in slowly. The starch takes it and sets to a sauce.

Kneaded in, the yolk fat shortens the web just enough to roll it thin without tearing.

The web traps what the yeast breathes out. Bread is a gas problem solved by protein.

It tightens the dough and slows the yeast. Leave it out and you get a fast, flabby loaf.

Sugar competes for the water and keeps the web short. That is why cake crumbs instead of tearing.

Rubbed in cold, it coats the flour and blocks the web. Shortcrust is a deliberate failure.

In the dough it softens the crumb; under it, the base fries instead of baking.

Blond roux, then stock. Every velouté and every gravy on earth is this and nothing else.

Acid dough, no yeast, no waiting. The rise happens in the oven and then it is over.

Smoking fat, cold batter, and no stirring after it goes in. The steam does the lifting.

Coarse durum for bite, soft wheat for pliability. Most fresh pasta dough is a blend of both.

Cheese folded into hot flour paste. It bakes hollow and the fat stops the shell going tough.

Bubbles and alcohol in the batter mean less water to boil off, so the crust sets thin.

Cold batter, barely mixed, lumps left in. Overwork it and the coating turns to bread.

Malted barley flour goes in at the mill to turn starch into sugar the yeast can reach.

Nutty butter poured into flour, almond and egg whites. The crust sets like an eggshell.

Bloomed in the milk, kneaded through a sweet dough. Cornwall and Sweden both arrived here.

Flour batter, shredded cabbage, then shaved fish on top that curls in the rising steam.

Toasted sheet crumbled into the dough. Marine salt in a crumb with no flavour to fight it.

Spent brewing yeast folded back into a yeast dough. The loaf tastes of its own process.