Why there are holes in risen bread

Growing up, I really liked the holes in bread. I guess many do.

A few years ago, a friend asked me why you’d want holes in bread though. She had overheard my other friend and I been talking about baking, and how we were using the sizes and amounts of holes as our primary gauge for how well our bread turned out.

Put on the spot, I suddenly thought that there was no point to all this nothingness that just makes the hummus fall through and the bread difficult to eat. My response on the spot was “The holes themselves fill no purpose. We use them to see of the bread has risen enough, or even too much.”

I had done some bad breads that got too heavy, too hard, uncuttable, unchewable, not properly bakeable and that had insufficient holes.

That was a few years ago.

But lately I’ve been using yeast that has gone a bit borbs and I’ve been seeing some pretty messed up bread as a result and without the holes, the breads come out more like floppy pancakes. They fold in your hand, spilling even more hummus than what was falling through the holes.

Having holes makes the rest of the bread be like a scaffolding. It’s becomes strong and light, like a atoms in a carbon structure or like a three-dimensional Voronoi net.

It’s what’s not there that makes what’s there what it is.

It’s what’s not there that makes what’s there what it is.