Final answer:
True, adding too much extra flour to yeast dough can make the bread tough because it alters the delicate balance of ingredients needed for proper fermentation and rising, leading to a denser and more difficult to chew texture.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement is true; adding too much extra flour to yeast dough can indeed make the bread tough. This happens because excess flour increases the amount of gluten in the dough, leading to a denser and tougher texture once baked. Bread is a delicate balance of ingredients where each component plays a specific role. Yeast creates air pockets by fermenting the sugars present in the flour, leading to dough expansion. If there is too much flour, it can absorb the moisture needed by the yeast to grow, thus preventing the dough from rising adequately and resulting in a tougher bread.
Historically, artisanal breads relied on the natural process of capturing wild yeasts from the air, which could be unpredictable. Prior to the development of modern yeast strains, this made the process of making artisanal bread both long and laborious. Many batches of dough failed due to the inconsistent nature of wild yeast, leading to a large amount being discarded. This reflects the importance of controlled yeast fermentation in breadmaking, a discovery that has markedly improved efficiency and reliability in bread production.