Our Best Bread Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to moist bread? ›

Fortunately, one of the most glaring baking problems has an easy solution: ensuring your bread stays moist. The key is twofold: use quality ingredients and let the dough stand overnight. If you're using storebought flour, opt for “bread flour,” which will hold better in heat and help create a more tender crumb.

Adding seeds and nuts to your dough

If you love a seeded loaf, you're not alone – it was my most popular bread when I baked and sold bread locally. Choose a mix of your favourite seeds and soak them, ideally overnight but for at least an hour before adding them to your dough.

If you're looking to ramp up the taste of your favorite bread recipe, we recommend adding a bit of fat. A fat like butter, olive oil or coconut oil in small quantities will help your bread achieve a higher rise and it will also boost its flavor by tenfold.

This involves gently stretching the dough to elongate the emerging air bubbles, then neatly folding the dough upon itself to keep the dough shape compact. Between stretches and folds you probably need to leave the dough a minimum of an hour, to allow time for the bubbles to grow bigger and new ones to emerge.

Consistency: Bakeries often use machines to ensure consistent kneading and proofing times. This consistency is key to producing the same soft texture batch after batch. Special Ingredients: Many bakeries use dough conditioners or enhancers, which improve the texture and extend the bread's shelf life.

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.

Longer fermentation gives bread stronger flavors. “A yeasty aroma and acidic flavors start to develop, adding more flavor to the finished bread,” Blakeslee said. Some bakers choose to do the extra step of making a sponge in order to add a slight sour and tangy flavor to the bread.

Homemade bread contains no chemicals, artificial additives, preservatives, or enzymes. These are often used in store-bought bread to make them stay fresher for longer and enhance the taste.

Yeast raises bread dough and makes it fluffy by releasing gas. Q. Assertion: Yeasts, such as Saccharomyces Cerivisiae are used in baking industry. Reason: Carbon dioxide produced during fermentation causes bread dough to rise by thermal expansion.

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

How can I make my bread lighter and fluffy? ›

All it takes is a small amount of dough enhancer per loaf to create a much lighter and fluffier result. Using a dough enhancer like Vital Wheat Gluten works to improve the texture and elasticity of the dough and elongate the strands of gluten. Doing so allows more room for the gas in the dough to develop and rise.

Honey adds both sweetness and moisture to breads such as challah. Be sure to use a pasteurized honey, as wild honeys contain antibacterial properties that can kill yeast. Store honey at room temperature, out of direct sunlight. Honey would makes everything better, but especially sourdough.

Usually it's gluten (a product of the protein in flour) that determines bread's texture. Bread where gluten plays a prominent role will be chewier. When the gluten level is lower, or when gluten is tamed by the addition of “softeners” like milk, butter, eggs, or oil, the bread will be more tender.

Storing bread in either plastic, cloth, or foil helps retain the loaf's moisture.