Use a Dough Enhancer Boost the fluffiness of your bread by using a dough enhancer like Vital Wheat Gluten. All it takes is a small amount of dough enhancer per loaf to create a much lighter and fluffier result.
Dense or heavy bread can be the result of not kneading the dough mix properly –out of many reasons out there. Some of the other potential reasons could be mixing the yeast & salt together or losing your patience while baking or even not creating enough tension in the finished loaf before baking the bread.
For a fluffy bread texture, the key is to let the bread rise long enough. Now, you may be wondering “how long does it take for bread to rise?” The short answer is that it depends on the temperature of your kitchen. For bread to rise, yeast must be activated, and yeast is very sensitive to temperature.
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.
Baking soda and baking powder are more common in recipes for cookies, cakes, and quick breads, and they are responsible for giving baked goods the light, fluffy, porous structure that makes them delicious.
Then it's just an addition of a teaspoon of yeast, about 0.3 ounces of salt, and sugar (if you're proofing the yeast, otherwise it's not necessary unless you're going for a bread with some sweetness). No matter what amount you choose, the rules hold. The ratio is 5:3.
Consider vitamin C. Vitamin C strengthens the gluten in flour, which can give a better rise, and help dough to rise more quickly. You probably won't need it if you're making white bread, but if you make wholemeal bread and it doesn't rise as well as you hoped, you could try a little vitamin C next time.
If your dough feels dense and tough to handle when you stop the mixer, it is a sign that it is becoming over-kneaded. Over-kneaded dough can become very hard to work with and produce a more flat and chewy bread.
Baking with oil not only requires less work, and results in fewer dirty dishes, than butter, but it also produces tender, moist baked goods that get better with age and boast an impressively long shelf-life.
Commercial bakeries use two types of ingredients to slow spoilage — emulsifiers and enzymes. Emulsifiers keep bread from going stale by preventing oil and water from separating. Adding emulsifiers sometimes goes by the names “crumb softening” or “dough conditioning” because it works to preserve texture.
An excess of flour can create a stiff, dry dough. A perfectly kneaded dough springs back when poked with your finger and will feel soft and silky in texture.
Kneading for 10-12 minutes by hand or 8-10 minutes in a mixer are the general standards; if you've been massaging the dough for that length of time, you can be pretty confident that you've done your job.
The sugar forms strong bonds with water molecules so it helps to keep baked goods soft and moist. Additionally, adding a small amount of sugar will result in a denser texture, such as bread or rolls, and a larger amount of sugar will give a light fluffy texture, such as for cake and other pastries.
It all counts towards baking the perfect loaf of bread. The ideal oven temperatures for baking bread ranges anywhere between 350 and 475°F (180 and 246°C), optimizing both caramelization and the Maillard reaction (which we'll get into) providing the perfect color and texture in the final product.
“If the dough has risen too long, it's going to feel fragile and might even collapse as you poke it,” says Maggie. If this is the case, there's a chance you can save your dough by giving it a quick re-shape. Learn more about this fix in our blog on saving overproofed dough.
Temperature matters
Nail the sweet spot — warm enough to rise at a decent rate, yet cool enough to develop flavor — and you're golden. Studies have shown that the optimum temperature for yeast to grow and flavor to develop is 75°F to 78°F. (Interested in the science behind the data?
The second proving has given the bread more elasticity, and made it harder to deflate the air. Second rises may add significantly to the total time it takes to complete a loaf of bread, but the step can be essential to achieving the taste and texture inherent to a number of popular breads.
Too much yeast could cause the dough to go flat by releasing gas before the flour is ready to expand. If you let the dough rise too long, it will start having a yeast or beer smell and taste and ultimately deflate or rise poorly in the oven and have a light crust.
The general bread-making rule is 1% dried yeast to flour (ie 5g yeast for 500g flour). More than that and your bread will taste yeasty. You can use less if you want to, though - the dough will take longer to rise, but it will develop more flavour.
The acidic properties of vinegar inhibit gluten, some will say. This theory proposes that once the water and flour are combined, gluten starts forming, causing the dough to grow tough. Adding an acid, the theory goes, stops the gluten in its tracks and rescues the crust from toughness.
These gases get trapped inside the dough buy the mesh the gluten makes. This is what causes your bread to be airy and fluffy. This mesh is formed by kneading the dough. If you do not knead a dough enough you do not give your bread a chance as the gluten did not have enough time to build that mesh.
Baking Soda
It's used to chemically leaven doughs and batters when it is mixed with an acid. Combining baking soda with an acid produces a chemical reaction that releases carbon dioxide gas which causes the food to expand and become fluffy.
Using too much baking soda or baking powder can really mess up a recipe, causing it to rise uncontrollably and taste terrible.