Bread

A loaf of bread is flour, water, salt and yeast, and not much else. Most kitchens already have all four. What stops most people is the idea that bread is a craft of feel: ten minutes of kneading, a warm spot, a knowing thump on the bottom. Some of that's real. But a good crusty loaf can be made with about twenty minutes of your hands, a pot with a lid and a day of waiting, and the reasons it works are the same mechanisms you've met all course: proteins that change with water and heat (lesson 5), starch that swells in hot water (lesson 9), a crust that dries before it browns (lesson 2).

So the lesson goes in three steps. It explains what each of the four ingredients does and how the stretchy network in bread forms, either by kneading or by time. It teaches the arithmetic bakers use to read and scale any bread recipe, which is lesson 10's ratios made exact. And it has you bake one no-knead loaf, keep a log, and learn to read a loaf that goes wrong. It ends on raw flour, which is a safety rule people break without knowing it exists.

You'll need an oven, an oven-safe pot with a lid (about 4 litres), oven gloves, a kitchen scale, a cooling rack if you have one, and your thermometer from lesson 2. To buy, if you don't have them: bread flour, instant yeast and a little cornmeal or semolina. Instant yeast is what the recipe below names. If your packet says active dry yeast, that's a different product, and this course hasn't read how the recipe works with it.

Four ingredients, four jobs

Flour and water make the structure. Wheat flour contains proteins that, once wet, link into a network. America's Test Kitchen describes gluten as "a strong network of cross-linked proteins that traps air bubbles and stretches as the dough bakes".¹ Without that network there's nowhere for gas to stay, and no loaf.

Yeast makes the gas. King Arthur Baking's reference page on yeast describes what happens once the dough is mixed. Enzymes in the flour turn some of its starch into sugar. "The yeast ferments the sugar, and as a result of this fermentation, carbon dioxide gas and alcohol are produced. The CO2 is trapped by the gluten network in the dough, and provides volume to the baked loaf. The alcohol is largely evaporated during the baking of the bread."³ One detail surprises people. The yeast in dough barely multiplies; the page says "there is almost no reproduction occurring in bread dough, and the rise we see is almost entirely due to gas production during fermentation."³ So a rise is yeast working, not yeast growing.

Temperature sets its pace. The same page puts commercial yeast's best fermentation temperature at 86° to 95°F (30 to 35°C) "or even higher", and then warns that a dough that warm "is inappropriate; although fermentation would be favored, it would occur at the expense of flavor development, which requires lower temperatures."³ Fast isn't the goal, and that is worth remembering when a recipe asks you to wait.

Salt seasons it, and does more. King Arthur's page on salt lists several jobs. It gives flavour. It "tightens the gluten structure", so the dough holds gas better. And it slows the yeast: "If there is no salt, the yeast will ferment too quickly."⁴ Too much salt slows the yeast so far that the loaf loses volume.⁴

Gluten, by kneading or by time

A recipe that says "knead for ten minutes" is doing one particular job, and it helps to know what the job is.

ATK's J. Kenji López-Alt explains it with a picture. For the proteins in flour to link up, "the proteins in the flour need to be aligned next to each other. Imagine the proteins as bundled-up balls of yarn that you are trying to tie together into one longer piece".¹ Balled-up yarn won't tie. You have to straighten it first, and "This straightening out and aligning is usually accomplished by kneading."¹ Kneading is pushing, folding and stretching the dough until the proteins lie in order.

There's a second way. Flour carries its own enzymes, and given time in a wet dough they do some of the untangling for you. In López-Alt's words, "enzymes naturally present in wheat act like scissors, cutting the balled-up proteins into smaller segments that are easier to straighten during kneading."¹ Short pieces straighten more easily than whole balls, which is why a dough that has rested needs much less kneading. Bakers call this rest autolysis, or the French autolyse. Most recipes give it 20 to 30 minutes.¹ Water matters too: "The more water there is, the more efficiently the cut-and-link process takes place."¹

Put a very long rest together with a lot of water and the scissors can do nearly all the work. That's no-knead bread. The best-known version was developed by Jim Lahey of the Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan and became famous in 2006. ATK describes it: mix flour, "a tiny amount of yeast", a little salt and water, leave it "12 to 18 hours", then shape it and bake it in a heavy covered pot.¹ López-Alt worked out why it succeeds. Its dough is 85% water by the flour's weight (the next section explains that way of counting), and with that much water and that long a rest, the enzymes had cut the proteins so small that they "could stretch out and cross-link during fermentation and the brief turning step" without any kneading.¹

Martin Philip, a baker at King Arthur, says the same thing from the bakery side: "when we mix flour with water, the components of gluten come together, forming an elastic, extensible network. This happens without kneading or mixing: simply add water, wait, and voilá, a cohesive dough forms."² He does not knead most of his bread. He folds it a few times in the bowl while it rises, and says the folds "take the short chains of gluten that form in the bowl during mixing and fermentation and link them together".² Kneading, folding and waiting are three routes to one network.

That's the course's question again: what is the rule protecting? "Knead for ten minutes" protects an organised gluten network. A wet dough with a long rest gets there another way, so for that dough the rule doesn't apply.

Baker's percentages

Bread recipes written by bakers look odd at first, because every quantity is given as a percentage and the flour is always 100%. King Arthur's reference page puts the rule in one line: "each ingredient in a formula is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight, and the flour weight is always expressed as 100%."⁶ Water, salt and yeast are each divided by the flour's weight. So a dough with 1,000 g of flour and 700 g of water has 70% water, and bakers call that 70% hydration. Water counts towards hydration, and so, Philip says, can liquids that are mostly water, such as milk or beer; fats don't, even liquid ones.⁵

It's the same idea as lesson 10's vinaigrette ratio, made exact and anchored on one ingredient. And it has two uses. It lets you see what kind of bread a recipe makes at a glance, whatever its size. And it lets you scale any recipe to any amount.

Weights matter here in a way lesson 3 already showed you. King Arthur's ingredient weight chart gives a tablespoon of table salt as 18 g, of Morton's kosher salt as 16 g, and of Diamond Crystal kosher salt as 8 g.⁹ A recipe that says "a tablespoon of salt" can mean less than half as much salt depending on the box. A recipe in grams can't.

How much salt

Salt is the one ingredient with a near-standard figure. King Arthur's reference page says: "Generally, the correct amount of salt in bread dough is 1.8 to 2% of salt based on flour weight".⁴ Martin Philip, writing on King Arthur's blog about baker's math, says bakers set their own figures for everything else, and "Salt is the only exception and can generally be calculated at 1.8% to 2.2%."⁵ The two differ a little at the top, and both come from one company; this course didn't read a second baking authority on the figure. For your own bread, 2% sits inside both.

A loaf from the 5:3 ratio

Michael Ruhlman, who wrote a book of cooking ratios, gives bread as "a basic bread ratio of 5 parts flour to 3 parts water", and says it "can be turned into pizza dough, flat bread, or even a braided loaf with kosher salt".⁷ Turn that into percentages. Three parts water to five of flour is 3 ÷ 5, so 60% hydration. The post names salt but gives no amount of salt or yeast, so both are added here.

Start from 500 g of flour.

1. Flour 500 g, which is 100%.
2. Water at 60%: 500 × 0.60 = 300 g.
3. Salt at 2%, inside both King Arthur ranges: 500 × 0.02 = 10 g.
4. Yeast. King Arthur's chart gives two teaspoons of instant yeast as 6 g, so one teaspoon is 3 g.⁹ 3 ÷ 500 = 0.6%. That's this course's choice for a kneaded loaf meant to rise in a few hours, not a standard; Philip's post says there are no firm rules for yeast.⁵

So the formula reads: flour 100%, water 60%, salt 2%, yeast 0.6%. Add the percentages and you get 162.6%, which means the whole dough weighs 1.626 times the flour. Check it: 500 + 300 + 10 + 3 is 813 g, and 500 × 1.626 is 813 g.

Now scale it. Say you want two loaves and 1,200 g of dough in all. King Arthur's page gives the method: add up the percentages, then "divide our new desired dough weight by the sum of the percentages".⁶ So 1,200 ÷ 1.626 gives 738 g of flour. The rest follows from the flour: 443 g of water, 15 g of salt and 4 g of yeast (738 × 0.006 is 4.4). Those add to 1,200 g. King Arthur's page rounds its factor up, on the grounds that "it is better to have a little extra bread rather than not enough".⁶

This is where the percentages earn their keep. You scaled one number and every other quantity followed from it, and the bread will behave the same at either size, because its proportions haven't changed.

How much water, and what it does to the loaf

ATK's article includes three test loaves made to show what water does. At 50% hydration the loaf was "small and dense with a tight crumb". At 68%, "this loaf rose and expanded well, possessing modest-sized holes." At 80%, the gluten network was, in the caption's words, "weak and diluted", and "the loaf was flat and wide with large air pockets."¹ López-Alt adds that "Most rustic breads, on the other hand, max out at around 80 percent hydration, and standard sandwich breads are never more than 75 percent hydrated."¹

So more water helps a no-knead dough form gluten, and makes a loaf harder to shape. The original no-knead recipe ran into exactly that. López-Alt gave it to "five inexperienced bakers", and their loaves came out "ranging from rounded mounds to flat, irregular blobs". The dough was too wet to handle: "it was deflating on its way into the pot", and it "was spreading out over the bottom of the pot before it could firm up properly."¹

One no-knead loaf

This is King Arthur Baking's "Absolutely No-Knead Crusty-Chewy Bread", chosen because it's free to read, it gives grams, and it asks for no shaping at all.⁸ Read the recipe itself before you start; the steps below follow it, with the reasons added.

Plan the timing first. The recipe says the dough "is stirred together; rests for 10 hours; is put into a crock; rises for 2 hours, and bakes for 45 minutes."⁸ It suggests mixing at about 10 p.m. for a Saturday loaf, and says a same-day version can cut the first rest to 8 hours. Almost all of that is waiting. Your hands are busy for about twenty minutes in total.

1. Weigh and stir. 600 g of bread flour, 605 g of cool water, 14 g of table salt, ¼ teaspoon of instant yeast. Stir until the flour has disappeared, which the recipe says takes about 10 seconds of vigorous stirring.⁸ That's all the mixing there is. Bread flour is what the recipe names, and it credits the flour with the structure this loaf needs.⁸
2. Wait, somewhere cool. Cover the bowl and leave it 10 to 12 hours at "cool room temperature", where "about 68°F to 70°F is ideal" (20 to 21°C).⁸ The enzymes are cutting, the gluten is forming, and a little yeast is making gas slowly. By the end the dough "should be very bubbly and will have risen quite a bit."⁸
3. Into the pot. Grease the pot well and dust it with cornmeal or semolina. It must be oven-safe, "it really does need a lid", and it needs to be about 4 inches (10 cm) deep, 4 to 4½ quarts (about 4 litres).⁸ Check that the maker's heat limit reaches the 450°F you'll bake at, lid knob included. Gently stir the dough a few strokes so it deflates (the recipe's "stir down"), scoop it in, put the lid on and leave it 1½ to 2 hours. Heat the oven to 450°F (232°C) towards the end.⁸
4. Bake covered, then uncovered. 45 minutes with the lid on, then, with oven gloves, lift the lid off and give it 5 to 10 minutes more, until the top is golden with darker blisters.⁸
5. Check the centre. The recipe gives no internal temperature, so take one from another King Arthur writer. PJ Hamel tested loaves at different finishing temperatures and concluded: "Most loaves and rolls will indeed be done when they register 190°F at their center" (88°C).¹⁰ Push your thermometer into the middle through the side.
6. Cool before you cut. Turn the loaf out onto a rack. The recipe is blunt: "slicing hot bread makes it irretrievably gummy."⁸ Wait until it's barely warm.

Why the lid

Martin Philip calls the covered pot the home baker's answer to a bakery's steam-injected oven. Early in the bake, he says, "it’s important that the crust remains supple (moist) for as long as possible", because a moist crust stretches as the loaf expands instead of drying and setting. A lidded pot does it with the loaf's own water: "trapped moisture (from the loaf itself) remains in place, settling on the crust and preventing it from setting too soon." Then the lid comes off, because "the drying period is key for crust firmness and full color (and flavor)."¹¹ He compared two loaves from one batch, one covered and one baked bare, and the bare one had "much less volume, a tighter interior structure".¹¹ The post also sells a lightweight baking cloche from King Arthur's shop, but the principle doesn't depend on it.

This is lesson 2 in a pot. With the lid on, the crust stays wet, and a wet surface can't climb much past water's boiling point, so it stretches instead of setting. With the lid off, it dries, then browns. Lesson 2 quoted a review of the chemistry that gives baking's order as "dough expansion, surface desiccation, and crust browning", and the lid lets you run those in sequence. Philip preheats his pot and says "A hot pot makes the bread jump".¹¹ King Arthur's no-knead recipe puts the dough in a cold pot, because that's where it rises, and still works; the two methods are built for different doughs.

Water's ceiling also explains Hamel's thermometer readings. She found that a loaf's inside "will never rise above 212°F, since that's the boiling point of water" (100°C).¹⁰ So the centre of a loaf behaves like lesson 2's boiled potato, and the thermometer tells you whether it has got far enough up that range. At altitude, where water boils lower, she suggests aiming about 5°F lower.¹⁰

A flat loaf, and a recipe halved

Here's a harder case. It's constructed for this lesson, so the numbers are the course's, not a tested recipe's.

A friend has a no-knead recipe at the original's 85% hydration: 400 g of flour, 340 g of water, 8 g of salt (2%) and ½ teaspoon of instant yeast, which is about 1.5 g by King Arthur's chart, or about 0.4%. Its method is the classic one: rest overnight, turn it out, shape it into a ball on the counter, let it rise, lift it into a pot. They want a smaller loaf for a smaller pot, so they halve it.

The halving. Percentages don't change when you halve, which is the reason to think in them: 200 g of flour, 170 g of water and 4 g of salt, and the dough behaves the same. The yeast is the awkward one. Half of 1.5 g is 0.75 g, and most kitchen scales read in whole grams, so weighing it isn't reliable. A quarter of the chart's 3 g teaspoon is about 0.75 g, which is ¼ teaspoon.⁹ Measure the yeast by spoon.

What does not halve cleanly is time. A smaller loaf is a thinner loaf, and lesson 2 showed that the centre of a thinner piece heats sooner. So the recipe's baking times are the writer's estimate for a bigger loaf. Start checking the centre earlier, and go by the thermometer.

The log. Your friend's halved loaf came out flat, and they kept notes:

• Mixed at 11 p.m.; kitchen cold overnight, about 16°C (61°F). Turned out at 6 a.m., 7 hours later. Barely bubbly.
• Shaped on the counter; the dough slumped at once. It sagged as it was lifted into the pot and spread across the bottom.
• Oven at 200°C (about 390°F), pot not heated. 30 minutes lid on, 10 off.
• Centre read 180°F (82°C). Cut straight away. Crumb tight and dense in places, gummy in the middle.

Raw flour and raw dough

Lesson 4 said raw flour would be taught here. Most people know not to eat raw cookie dough because of the egg. Fewer know the flour is a problem on its own.

The CDC's raw flour page is direct: "Flour doesn't look like a raw food, but most flour is raw." It names E. coli and Salmonella as the germs, and says "Steps like grinding grain and bleaching flour don't kill harmful germs". The only thing that does: "Germs are killed only when flour is baked or cooked." It adds that the "CDC investigated outbreaks linked to raw flour or cake mix in 2016, 2019, 2021, and 2023."¹²

The UK's Food Standards Agency, in its guidance on flour, says the same, and is careful about how often it happens. "Getting ill from uncooked flour or flour products is rare as they are mostly used as an ingredient in foods to be to be baked or cooked." (The repeated "to be" is on the FSA's page.) Its advice names dough outright: "You should not eat flour or flour products such as pastry and doughs that have not been cooked thoroughly or are not sold as ready to eat." The reason is that "flour is not usually treated during processing to kill any food poisoning bacteria that may be present."¹³ Its list of things not to eat or taste uncooked is broad: "pastry, cookie dough, pizza dough and batter, such as cake mix, unless labelling indicates they are ready to eat".¹³ The CDC's list includes pizza dough too.¹² Bread dough is covered by both, egg or no egg.

A miller says it too. King Arthur's own flour safety page: "Flour is considered a raw ingredient and it should never be consumed without being cooked or baked first."¹⁴

Two practical points follow. Flour is a powder, and the CDC and the FSA both warn that it spreads.¹²¹³ So the counter you floured, the bowl, the scraper and your hands get washed afterwards like anything that touched raw meat in lesson 4, and King Arthur's page names "surfaces or cutting boards that have been dusted with flour" in particular.¹⁴ And recipes online sometimes tell you to heat-treat flour at home so you can eat it raw. The FSA's view: "while heat treatments applied in the home may reduce the risk, we can’t be certain that they will kill any harmful bacteria that might be present and eliminate the risk completely."¹³ Shop-bought edible cookie dough is different, the CDC says, because it's made with "heat-treated flour and pasteurized eggs or no eggs", and it adds that you should read the label to make sure the dough is meant to be eaten without baking.¹²

On eating raw dough the two countries agree, which is not always true in this course. The FSA says the advice matters most for "young children, those with compromised immune systems and older people".¹³ Lesson 4's callout for cooking for someone at higher risk says the same thing: don't give them raw dough or batter. Children and play dough is where the two differ in strength. The CDC's list of things not to do includes letting children play with or eat dough made with raw flour, crafts included. The FSA doesn't say not to play with it; it gives its handling advice for crafts and play and says children and older people may need extra care.¹²¹³ Either way, nobody eats it, and hands get washed afterwards.

What people get wrong

"Bread needs ten minutes of kneading." Kneading is one way to line up the proteins. A long rest in a wet dough does much of the same work, 15 seconds of kneading was enough for ATK's drier no-knead dough, and King Arthur's recipe has none at all.¹⁸ Ten minutes is right for some doughs made quickly. It isn't a law of bread.

"More yeast makes better bread." More yeast makes gas faster, not better bread. King Arthur's no-knead loaf uses about a fifth of the yeast of this lesson's kneaded 5:3 loaf and makes up for it with time. King Arthur's yeast page warns that a dough warm enough for the fastest fermentation gives it "at the expense of flavor development"; that a big dose of yeast costs flavour the same way is this course's reading, since the page is about temperature, not quantity.³⁸ Time isn't a guarantee either. López-Alt found that in the original slow no-knead loaf "the flavor of the crumb fell flat in every sample", and added vinegar and a mild lager to his version.¹

"Salt kills yeast, so keep it out of the way." Salt slows yeast; it doesn't stop it at bread's usual 2%. King Arthur's page says that without it, "the yeast will ferment too quickly."⁴

"Raw dough is fine if there's no egg in it." The flour is raw. The CDC and the FSA both say do not eat uncooked dough or batter, and grinding and bleaching don't make flour safe.¹²¹³

"The wetter the dough, the better the bread." Water helps a dough form gluten without kneading and gives a more open crumb, but ATK's 80% test loaf was flat and wide.¹ A very wet dough needs a pot to hold its shape, or a baker who can handle it.

Practice

Connections

Lesson 2 gave you water's ceiling and a crust that dries before it browns; here they explain the lid, and why a loaf's centre never passes 212°F. Lesson 3 showed that salts differ spoon for spoon, which is why bread is written in grams. Lesson 4 set out cleaning and higher-risk cooking; raw flour is one more raw ingredient under the same rules. Lesson 9's starch gelatinisation is also happening inside the loaf as it bakes, and Hamel's note that gluten-free bread is baked to 205°F "in order to gelatinize its starches" is that lesson in a different food.¹⁰ Lesson 10 made ratios; baker's percentages are the exact form of the same idea.

Bread here was one lean loaf. Flatbreads, sourdough, enriched doughs such as brioche, and pastry are the next crafts, and they use the same arithmetic. Lesson 12 turns ratios on recipes of every kind, and plans a week of cooking around them.

Go deeper

• J. Kenji López-Alt, "No-Knead Bread 2.0", America's Test Kitchen, 2008. Read in full for this course. The clearest account of why no-knead bread works, with the hydration test loaves and the 15-second fix. ATK's recipe for its version is behind a paywall and wasn't read.
• King Arthur Baking, "Salt" and "Yeast", professional reference pages. Read in full. Short, practical explanations of what each ingredient does in a dough, written for working bakers.
• Martin Philip, "Why this pro baker doesn't knead", King Arthur Baking, 2021. Read in full. How folding and time build dough strength, and how to adapt a kneaded recipe to it. The natural next step after the loaf in this lesson.
• PJ Hamel, "Using a thermometer with yeast bread", King Arthur Baking, 2017. Read in full. A baker testing finishing temperatures on several breads and tasting the results, which is the kind of test this course keeps asking you to run.

Sources

1. J. Kenji López-Alt, "No-Knead Bread 2.0", America's Test Kitchen, published 1 January 2008, https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/41-no-knead-bread-2-dot-0 . Read level: full, directly. Supports: gluten as a network that traps gas; the yarn image and kneading's job; enzymes as scissors, autolysis and its usual 20 to 30 minutes; more water, more efficient cutting; the original recipe's method, its 12 to 18 hours and Lahey's name; its 85% hydration and why it worked without kneading; the five bakers' loaves, deflating and spreading; the 70% loaf and the 15-second fix; the cut from 12 to 8 hours; the 50%, 68% and 80% test loaves; the 80% and 75% limits for rustic and sandwich breads; the flat flavour and the vinegar and lager.
2. Martin Philip, "Why this pro baker doesn't knead", King Arthur Baking blog, 8 October 2021, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2021/10/08/mix-and-fold-in-bread-dough . Read level: full, directly. Supports: gluten forming from water and time without kneading; folds linking short chains of gluten.
3. King Arthur Baking, "Yeast", professional reference page, no author or date, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/yeast . Read level: full, directly. Supports: starch to sugar to carbon dioxide and alcohol; gas trapped by gluten; alcohol evaporating in baking; almost no reproduction in dough; the 86° to 95°F optimum and a dough that warm costing flavour. The page ties the flavour cost to temperature; applying it to the amount of yeast is the course's reading, as the body says.
4. King Arthur Baking, "Salt", professional reference page, no author or date, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/salt . Read level: full, directly. Supports: salt at 1.8 to 2% of flour weight; tightening gluten; slowing yeast, and too much salt cutting volume; the slack, sticky, low, pale loaf without salt.
5. Martin Philip, "What is baker’s math, and how can I use it in my everyday bread baking?", King Arthur Baking blog, 28 April 2022, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2022/04/28/what-is-bakers-math-and-how-can-i-use-it-in-my-everyday-bread-baking . Read level: full text, directly; the formula tables are images and were not read. Supports: salt at 1.8 to 2.2% as the only near-standard; no firm rules for yeast and the rest; which liquids can count as hydration, and fats not counting.
6. King Arthur Baking, "Baker's Percentage", professional reference page, no author or date, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/pro/reference/bakers-percentage . Read level: the text, directly; its worked formulas are tables that were not read. Supports: the flour as 100%; scaling by dividing the dough weight by the sum of the percentages; rounding up.
7. Michael Ruhlman, "Bake Your Own 5:3 Bread", ruhlman.com, 27 March 2013, https://ruhlman.com/bread-ratio-5-3/ . Read level: full, directly. Supports: the 5:3 ratio and its uses. The post gives no salt or yeast figure; the lesson's 2% and 0.6% are its own, as the body says.
8. King Arthur Test Kitchen, "Absolutely No-Knead Crusty-Chewy Bread", recipe, no date, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/absolutely-no-knead-crusty-chewy-bread-recipe . Read level: full, directly. Supports: the ingredients and weights; the timeline and the 8-hour option; the pot's size, lid and depth; 68 to 70°F; the crock greased and not preheated; flat, not domed; 450°F, 45 minutes covered and 5 to 10 uncovered; slicing hot bread; dough left too long in the crock may fall; bread flour. The baker's percentages, and the salt sitting above King Arthur's ranges, are this course's arithmetic.
9. King Arthur Baking, "Ingredient Weight Chart", https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart . Read level: the rows used, directly. Supports: instant yeast, 2 teaspoons to 6 g; a tablespoon of table salt 18 g, Morton's kosher 16 g, Diamond Crystal 8 g. The quarter- and half-teaspoon weights are this course's arithmetic from it.
10. PJ Hamel, "Using a thermometer with yeast bread", King Arthur Baking blog, 7 April 2017, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2017/04/07/using-a-thermometer-with-yeast-bread . Read level: full, directly. Supports: 190°F at the centre; never above 212°F; about 5°F lower at altitude; gluten-free bread at 205°F to gelatinise its starches.
11. Martin Philip, "For crispy, crackly crusts, put a lid on it", King Arthur Baking blog, 27 February 2024, https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2024/02/27/covered-baker-bread-steaming . Read level: full, directly. The post also promotes a baking cloche (Brod & Taylor's Baking Shell) sold in King Arthur's shop. Supports: a supple crust and expansion; the loaf's own moisture trapped by a lid; the drying period for colour; his two-loaf comparison; a hot pot and oven spring.
12. CDC, "Raw Flour and Dough", https://www.cdc.gov/food-safety/foods/no-raw-dough.html , reviewed 24 November 2025, read through the Internet Archive's 20 September 2026 capture . Read level: full. Supports: most flour is raw; E. coli and Salmonella; grinding and bleaching; killed only by baking or cooking; outbreaks in 2016, 2019, 2021 and 2023; play dough and crafts, and not letting children play with or eat raw-flour dough; pizza dough in its list; flour spreading; heat-treated flour in shop-bought edible dough, and reading the label.
13. FSA, "Handling flour and flour products safely", GOV.UK, 11 April 2024, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/handling-flour-and-flour-products-safely/handling-flour-and-flour-products-safely . Read level: full, directly. Supports: rare but possible; not eating doughs that have not been cooked thoroughly; flour not usually treated; the list of uncooked products not to eat; flour spreading; the vulnerable groups; home heat treatment not certain; crafts and play.
14. King Arthur Baking, "Flour Safety", https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/policies/flour-safety . Read level: full, directly. Supports: flour as a raw ingredient; cleaning surfaces dusted with flour.