Hi Matthew,
Could it be that bread making is like any other hobby in that the
personality of the person involved has much to do with the preferences?
Or how about, "There's more than one 'right' way to do almost
everything."
It seems that bread making can be done many ways - quite successfully.
If you're one who likes things complicated, add 10 ingredients, if you
like it simple, pick a new ingredient see what it does before making its
addition routine.
Or just on impulse, try one (any one) of the dough enhancers.
I've tried quite a number of additions to my bread dough throughout the
years. It seems to me that additional gluten is a waste if you're buying
'bread flour' because that is one of the ingredients the mill has
already increased to make it a good 'bread flour.' If you buy whole
wheat or fresh grind your flour, then it can really help.
Malt, either powder or syrup, is an even better 'food' for yeast than
sugar. But with today's yeasts I sure have a hard time telling in which
loaf I've used a a teaspoon of sugar from the one with the spoonful of
malt.
I like things as simple as possible and don't use - for very long - any
ingredients that don't show a dramatic difference. That's why I latched
on to the 'lecithin, ginger, vitamin C' dough enhancer. It's simple,
less expensive than most, and the whole family noticed a difference in
the 'buttery' taste (there's no butter and only 1 teaspoon of olive
oil); the larger size of the loaf; and, if there's any left, the
freshness of the loaf a couple of days later. But there are a million
loaves of superb loaves of bread out there which include none of those
ingredients!
Bread making is just plain FUN, isn't it? And the Bread-bakers Digest
and all the people who write to it surely adds to the fun!
Raphael Ryan