![]() Proofing (or proving) bread means letting the dough rise undisturbed. If you used the right amount of yeast and added sufficient ingredients to slow it down, double-check how you proof it. If you've been doing the second round for longer than that, cut it back, and you should notice a difference in the crumb.Īnn_Shuravieva / iStock / Getty Images PlusĪvoiding overactive yeast is important in producing a great loaf of bread with a nice crumb. Typically, this is best when done for a much shorter time (two to five minutes). Setting a kitchen timer and learning to enjoy the "quiet time" spent kneading can help you reach the target.Īfter the first proofing, many breads need to be kneaded again to rework the gluten before shaping. Most recipes ask you to do the first round of kneading for a full 10 minutes (six minutes with a stand mixer or bread machine), and this is crucial. Visit a bread-baking friend to see how they do it, take a class, or watch videos online.Īlso, kneading can seem like a tedious task. If you're kneading by hand, study up on the proper technique. Bread that is under-kneaded will have more crumbs. It is one of the trickiest parts of learning to bake bread because it's hard to tell if you've kneaded too much or not enough. Kneading mixes the dough's ingredients and creates a good gluten structure for the bread. It's a fine balance, but the more loaves you make, the better you'll be able to recognize it. The goal of kneading in the right amount of flour is to produce a bread dough that still has some elasticity but is neither wet nor dry. Remember that you'll add more flour when you start kneading and less toward the end of the session.Continue this pattern until you're done kneading. Knead that in, and when you feel it getting sticky again, add a little more. As you knead and the dough gets sticky, generously sprinkle just enough flour onto the dough so it no longer adheres to your hands and board.While you may not need all of it, this helps you know the desired maximum amount of flour you'll need. Measure out the rest of the recipe's recommended flour.Weighing ingredients-including the main liquids-with a kitchen scale is more accurate than eyeing them in a measuring cup. Weigh out your initial flour measurement.While this is the correct method, it's the amount of flour you add each time that's the issue. After a bit of kneading, the dough becomes sticky to touch, so you add more flour. When baking your first loaves, it's very easy to add a lot of flour while kneading, especially if you do it by hand. Instead, the recipe may tell you approximately how much flour is needed and leave it up to the baker to know when to stop. It can be tricky because bread recipes don't always give you an exact amount of flour. The key is to find a balance between the flour and liquid ingredients in your recipe. This produces dry bread with more crumbs. Otherwise, try adding gluten: add one tablespoon of wheat gluten for every cup of all-purpose flour in your recipe.Īdding too much flour is one common mistake for beginning bakers. If you prefer to buy all-purpose flour because of its versatility in the kitchen, use a recipe specifically designed for it. When using whole-grain flour, bread recipes typically include white flour to increase the gluten and make the bread less dense. In a basic white loaf, you can get good bread with all-purpose flour, but you may also notice excess crumbs. All-purpose white flour has less gluten than white bread flour, which is designed to have the right amount of gluten that bread needs.īread bakers prefer high-gluten bread flour. If your bread does not have enough gluten, the crumb will not come out as expected.ĭifferent flours have varying amounts of gluten: white wheat flour contains the most, and whole-grain flours contain considerably less. Gluten helps bread maintain its shape and produces the "crumb" (or texture). Once these proteins become moist, they create stretchy molecules that give bread dough its elasticity. In conventional bread, gluten-a combination of two proteins found in grains like wheat and rye- is essential. ![]() Felbert+Eickenberg / STOCK4B / Getty Images
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