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Amylase?

Jim_3550

I just saw a recipe for this and was intrigued. I looked it up online but I think you need a physics degree to understand what it does. I've never seen it or heard of it. It was used in a bread recipe.

Anyone?

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Joseph_Bott_72485

From my understanding of it, it helps to break down the starches into sugars to help feed the yeast

Dion_Kesling_20774

There are a lot of enzymes types in flour. 2 of them are very important to bread making:

Amylase is an enzym in flour. It is responsible for sugar breakdown, causes yeast activity.

There is also protease, which is responsible for protein breakdown, causes dough stiffness.

Jim_3550

the only time i've ever seen it is for a brioche hamburger bun. it's to expensive if it isn't essential!

thanks for the info.

Saptarshi_93602

I have made the slider buns without amylase and it turned out fine. I'm sure amylase will add to the tenderness of the crumb. Amylase is an enzyme that breaks down carbohydrates. It's present in the human saliva too! That is probably the reason why bread carbs start tasting sweet right when we chew them (even when the bread has no added sugar).

Jonas_Lundh_97527

A physics degree would be less than useless in that regard. A chemistry one would do you much better.

Amylase, like others have already said, is a naturally ocurring enzyme that's present in saliva and wheat flour alike. It breaks down starch and complex glucose molecules (polysaccharids) into simpler ones that the yeast can feed on (and that is easier for our bodies to break down as well).

As for it being expensive, I can order 5kg of the stuff for less than $15. That's cheaper than baking soda or yeast.

Tim_Roth_78505

Amylase is so named because it is an enzyme (implied by the -ase suffix) that breaks down amylose (hence amyl-ase). Amylose is a linear string of glucose molecules used to store energy in plants. Together with the branched string of glucose molecules known as amylopectin, it is referred to as starch. There are a lot of enzymes that break the bonds between individual sugar molecules, but amylase is what you need to break down these large starch polymers into their glucose monomers.

The reason you use amylase in most bread recipes is to create sugar for the yeast to consume in the starter. This step is required in a wide range of processes requiring yeast, e.g. sake brewing (which has traditional methods in which the brewer chews the rice, allowing their own salivary amylase to break down the rice starch for the yeast). Yeast will produce their own amylases as they grow, but having some free sugar around helps them to grow faster initially and speeds up the yeast processes that bakers and brewers care about (i.e. the production of chemicals like carbon dioxide and ethanol). If your recipe doesn't use amylase at the start, expect it to compensate by adding extra sugar (I've got some sourdough starter recipes asking for honey, for example) or to cook some of the grains at the start in order to stimulate naturally occurring amylases in the grain itself in order to increase the amount of sugar in the mash prior to adding yeast.

Hopefully that makes sense and I didn't miss anything or get something wrong... if it's any consolation, you may not need a physics degree to understand this, but it's the bread and butter of a biochemistry degree!