In most situations, an undercooked loaf of bread can be fixed by returning it to the oven for a few more minutes. This is true for loaves where the outside of your bread may look fully set, but the inside of the bread is still gummy. Place the loaf back in a preheated oven at 350° F for 10-20 minutes.
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.
What to Do with Undercooked Banana Bread. You don't have to throw undercooked banana bread out. If you catch that the bread is undercooked right away, it's fine to just pop it right back into the oven. Ensure that the oven is still set to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Germs can find their way into raw flour during harvesting, processing, or shipping, and in your grocery cart or at home. Raw eggs may contain Salmonella bacteria, and should never be consumed raw or undercooked. Breads, cookies, cakes, biscuits, and any other baked good should always be fully cooked before it is eaten.
Air circulating around the loaf allows the steam built up inside the bread to evaporate. If the bread is kept in its baking pan, it will become soggy and look and taste doughy. If the bread has not finished baking by the maximum time indicated in the recipe, the oven thermostat may be off.
Bread is best cooled until only slightly warm before slicing as the texture and flavor are still developing. Bread takes so long to cool because it is initially still cooking when it comes out of the oven.
Doneness Tips for Breads
If you're ever in doubt, it's better to cook the loaf a little longer than to undercook it.
Your bread could be undercooked or unbaked inside for the following reasons: Your oven was too hot, so the outside of the bread cooked faster than the inside. You pulled your bread out of the oven too early. You didn't let your dough reach room temperature before baking it.
Undercooked bread dough can contain the same bacteria as raw dough. These bacteria can cause food poisoning and make you sick. It is crucial to bake bread dough all the way through to kill these bacteria. Otherwise, you could end up with a stomachache or diarrhoea.
For a cake that is fairly evenly undercooked, simply put it back in the oven for 10 or so minutes. For a cake that is undercooked only in the middle, get out your handy dandy aluminum foil, cover the cake, and place it back in the oven for about 10 minutes.
What does undercooked bread look like? Bread is distinguished as undercooked by its texture and firmness. A typical sign of undercooked bread is when it's too soft, close to the texture of the original raw dough.
Instead of using a cake tester or toothpick to test quick bread, try using a thin-bladed knife (like a paring knife). Push the blade into the center; draw it out. You may or may not see any wet batter or moist crumbs clinging to the blade.
Never brown or partially cook meat or poultry to refrigerate and finish later because any bacteria present would not have been destroyed. It is safe to partially cook meat and poultry in the microwave or on the stove only if the food is transferred immediately to the hot grill to finish cooking.
It is important to remove the bread from the pan as soon as it is cooked and place it on a cooling rack. As the loaf cools, any moisture which is left in the loaf escapes through the crust as steam and this is what causes the softening.
Strong, wet doughs spring well in the oven, forming nice “ears” and, if given time in cold fermentation, a blistered crust. But for many, the most coveted feature of high-hydration loaves is their dramatically open crumb or alveolar structure. In other words, it's all about the holes.
Similarly, gluten loves to be well hydrated. It allows it to form long, strong strands and stretch easily as it rises. But too much water weighs down the gluten network to prevent the dough from rising effectively and often collapses before or in the oven.
For best results, place the baked bread on a wire cooling rack and allow it to cool completely for at least 15 to 30 minutes before slicing. However, 2 hours would be ideal if you can control yourself. A loaf without enough cooling can gum up the slicer blade.
We sometimes advise checking the internal temperature of a loaf of bread before making the decision to pull it from the oven. A properly baked loaf typically registers a temperature between 195 and 210 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, depending upon the type of bread.
The dough will not be crisp and will likely still have a raw, doughy flavor. When you take a bite, the texture may be sticky and the dough may pull away from the roof of your mouth. An underbaked crust will also have a tendency to collapse, making it difficult to cut and eat.
Bread Loaves made with over-kneaded dough commonly end up with a hard crust and dry interior. Often upon cutting, slices will crumble. If your perfect bread loaf turns into a crumbly mess, don't worry. The overworked dough will work great when used as croutons or breadcrumbs.
In the test kitchen, we often recommend rotating cakes, pastries, and breads in the oven halfway through baking to promote even browning. (This is especially important because most ovens do not heat evenly.)
Most loaves and rolls will indeed be done when they register 190°F at their center.
As a general best practice, the middle oven rack is best for baking most types of bread due to the all-around temperatures. However, if you are baking scones or muffins that need a crispy or browned top layer, moving your dish to the upper-third of the oven, just above the center rack, would serve this purpose.