Easiest Ways to Make Homemade Bread Soft and Fluffy
By Richard Hendrick
Who doesn’t like a fresh loaf of bread from a local bakery? We all have noticed is that bread making at home is easier, simple, and tastier, but one thing homemade bread lacks is that it is never as soft or as fluffy as loaves of bread from your local bakeries. Bread from bakeries is so light and fluffy, which seems impossible to achieve at home, but not anymore! Our bakers have enlisted the most effective techniques and bread making tips to help you make bakery-like fluffy bread at home.
Bread making with simple flour, water, yeast and a pinch of salt seems simple, right? But little change in measurement, bread baking technique or ingredients impacts a lot on how your bread turns out.
The perfect way to achieve the fluffiness and tender texture of the bread is also quite simple, just with a few simple changes in your recipes. Let’s start with common bread making mistakes that result in chewy or dry bread with bread making tips to fix them:
Changes You Can Make in Your Recipes For Making Softer Bread
1. Do Not Over-Knead Your Dough
The over-kneading dough is a common bread making mistake, which makes gluten too tight for bread to rise, resulting in chewy bread instead of fluffy. Kneading correctly is most important to strengthen the gluten and give your bread a perfect texture. While kneading dough, make sure there are no lumps in the mixture and try to create a smooth dough.
How to check if your dough is fully kneaded?
The easiest way to check if your dough is appropriately kneaded is by taking a ‘Poke Test’. Whenever you feel your dough is fully kneaded, firmly poke in with a finger, and if it is filled back quickly and holds its shape, then you don’t need to knead any further. If the indent remains, then continue kneading for a little longer.
2. Ensure Dough is Well Hydrated
Another crucial bread making tip is that your dry ingredients to liquids ratio is precisely equal. A slight change in the measurement affects the texture of your bread. If your dry ingredients are more than liquid (whether you are using milk or water), it will make it hard for the dough to rise properly; yeast won’t work efficiently as water plays a role in yeast activation resulting in dry crusty bread. If your bread is not rising properly, check the measurement of liquids in the recipe.
3. Lubricate With Oil
One of the easiest ways our bakers follow to make bread soft and fluffy is by using 1-2 tablespoons of lubricant/fats such as vegetable oil to wet the ingredients. This will prevent the formation of excess gluten, as excess gluten makes bread chewy.
4. Add Sugar
Sugar acts as a liquifying agent in the dough. 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.
5. Add Eggs
Another bread making tips that can help you create better dough for softer and fluffy bread is by adding eggs. Eggs act as the binding agent, make the dough stronger, add rich flavour and extend the shelf life of bread.
6. Reduce Baking Time
One mistake often results in dry and hard bread is over-baking. Set your oven at the shortest time of the recipe and check if the bread is fully baked when the oven stops. You can check by tapping on the bottom side of the bread. Also, ensure the correct temperature while bread making.
7. Create Steam in Oven
Commercial bread is softer due to the steam process used by bakeries, which is made to keep bread hydrated and fresh. Use cold water in a pan and put it on a rack beneath your bread to create steam.
8. Add Milk
To make your bread soft and fluffy, another trick used by commercial bakers is replacing water with milk. Milk has fats which make bread softer.
We at Old Bridge Bakery, carrying years of tradition of bread making, provide authentic and delicious loaves of bread in different flavours. Come and enjoy! And for more bread making tips and recipes, follow our website.
