Simple homemade bread recipe | Jamie Oliver bread recipes (2024)

FAQs

What makes bread so light and fluffy? ›

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.

It adds nutritional value to baked goods. Mainly protein, calcium, and vitamin B12 which are all necessary for a heathy diet. But we don't only look for the nutritional benefits when using milk in our bread dough. The fat and lactose in milk help with tenderizing the crumb of the bread making it softer and sweeter.

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.

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

Egg has protein, fat, water and while the fat and water soften the crumb, the protein helps with strengthening the gluten and capturing more CO2. Eggs are also helping with leavening the dough which adds to the rise. Doughs that have more egg usually rise more, so go ahead and play around a bit!

When you substitute oil for butter, you need to take note of the texture. If you want delicate, soft, and tender baked goods, I recommend using oil vs. butter. Butter will result in a denser crumb and not be as moist.

Butter, technically a dough enrichment, tenderizes bread dough and limits gluten development, yielding a softer, more tender crumb and a richer flavor. The butter in this sourdough babka dough makes the interior tender—and delicious. Photo by Maurizio Leo.

It was for everyday use, and its distinctive soft, crumbly, dense texture results from the "soft" wheat that grows in the cool climate of Ireland, meaning that it doesn't have enough protein to form the gluten structure of yeast-raised breads. Hence the use of baking soda, originally potash, as a leavening agent.

You want to rise the dough so that the yeast still has enough energy in it to work in the oven to give you a nice, light, fluffy loaf of white bread.

What makes homemade bread taste yeasty? ›

If the area is too warm, bread will rise too fast and begin cooking before the yeast has finished acting. This will impart a "yeasty" taste to the dough that will be transferred to the finished baked loaf. Using old ingredients (rancid nuts, "old" shortening) will cause yeast breads to taste old or have an "off" taste.

If your bread has a sour, yeasty flavour and smells of alcohol then you have either used too much yeast.or you may have use stale yeast or creamed fresh yeast with sugar.

Quickly proofed bread tastes like wheat flour. Because that's mostly what it is. But long rising bread has a chance for the yeasts (and bacteria, too, in the case of sourdough) to eat the starches and burp out all sorts of flavorful byproducts, in addition to the CO2 we rely on to leaven the bread.

Adding dry milk powder to your bread dough will help your loaf rise higher. In addition, the loaf will stay soft and hold moisture longer which again means it will last longer. It also helps brown the crust. If you want a lighter fluffier bread loaf just add 2 Tbsp of dry milk to the flour per loaf of your bread.

How can you keep homemade bread soft and moist? Store bread in an airtight container or plastic bag: This will help trap the bread's natural moisture and prevent it from drying out. Keep bread at room temperature: Storing bread in the refrigerator can cause it to dry out, so it's best to keep it at room temperature.

The yeast releases carbon dioxide, which fills the dough and increases its volume. Due to the heat, more gas bubbles emerge when this dough is baked. The bread rises and becomes soft and fluffy as the gas leaves.

The usual reason why bread becomes too dense is due to using flour with low protein content. When your loaf is spongy and heavy, you might have also put too much flour into it or made the dough in a cooler or too warm setting.