Homemade Artisan Bread- The Easiest recipe Six different ways - Nesting With Grace (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to making good bread? ›

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Quick breads are typically mixed by hand, and it's important not to overmix the batter. Overmixing can cause the gluten in the flour to develop, resulting in a tough and chewy bread. Mix the batter just until the ingredients are combined, and then stop. If there are a few lumps in the batter, that's okay.

While bread flour is the best option, it can sometimes be used if you don't have bread flour. “Check the protein content,” advises Chef Jürgen, since it can vary from brand to brand, and an all-purpose flour that contains protein on the higher end of the range, 12 to 13 percent, will produce a better outcome.

Potato Flakes or Potato Water

Starch helps the dough by trapping the gas from the yeast in the dough and makes the bubbles stronger. This helps the bread to rise and be lighter and fluffier. If you are boiling potatoes, you can use the unsalted water in place of the water in your bread recipe to help out the yeast.

Does Rising Bread Affect Its Texture? For a fluffy bread texture, the key is to let the bread rise long enough.

Sugar: Not only does it sweeten the bread, but sugar also retains moisture. This means that adding sugar can indeed make bread softer. Baking Soda: When added, especially in recipes with acidic ingredients, it can make bread soft and spongy.

By surrounding small particles of fat, the egg helps make the quick bread batter smoother, thus contributing to volume and texture. In addition, when eggs are beaten, they incorporate tiny air bubbles that expand with heat in the oven, contributing to volume.

What are the 7 basic ingredients in quick bread? ›

Almost all quick breads have the same basic ingredients: flour, leavening, eggs, fat (butter, margarine, shortening, or oil), and liquid such as milk. Ingredients beyond these basic constituents are added for variations in flavor and texture.

Industrial loaf fabricators categorise ascorbic acid as a flour 'improver' or dough conditioner. In the presence of oxygen, ascorbic acid becomes an oxidising agent and the 'improvements' to which it contributes include: Strengthened gluten. Greater loaf volume.

Automated machines can now mix doughs, knead them, shape them, and bake them in a fraction of the time it would take to do it by hand. This has allowed bakeries to produce more bread in less time and with less labour, resulting in greater efficiency and cost savings.

Kneading. Kneading involves stretching and folding the dough in a rhythmical manner that develops the gluten in the flour and releases excess gas. Any large gas holes that may have formed during rising are released by kneading and so a more even distribution of both gas bubbles and temperature also results.

Fixing Undercooked Bread

It is pretty simple to salvage an undercooked bread and create a decent loaf. Heat the oven to 350 F, return the bread to the oven, and bake for another 10 to 20 minutes. This will work even if the loaf has cooled, which is similar to par-baking bread.

Onion Soup Mix

You probably didn't expect to see soup mix on a list of bread ingredients, but grandma would add this secret ingredient to give a rich, savory flavor to her bread. All you need to do is dissolve the mix in hot water before adding it to the yeast for your dough.

Wheat flour is the key ingredient in most breads. Flour quality is particularly important in breadmaking as the quality of the flour will have a significant impact on the finished product. When flour is moistened and stirred, beaten or kneaded, gluten develops to give dough `stretch`.

These ingredients can include things like potassium bromate, hydrogenated oil, trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, and azodicarbonamide. Luckily, making your bread at home means that your bread will end up free of these types of additives.