Bread – Everybody’s Favourite Nibble
June 19, 2022
Flour Processing Plant Engineering, Non Food Installation, Fabrications, Health & Safety
We, as a nation just love bread, and mostly due to the pandemic and lockdowns, we also love baking it. Making a loaf seems fairly straight forward, but there’s a lot that can go wrong and it’s often hard to know why. Some of the more common bread faults include:
The top of the loaf breaking open widely – This can be caused by gluten that’s inadequately conditioned. Problems with the rising agent or excessive oven heat.
An uneven texture – May be due to under fermented or over fermented dough.
Dries too quickly – This will happen for many reasons such as if the oven is too cool so the product is baked longer. Too much heat will have the same result, and over fermented dough is another culprit.
Dull crust with no shine – This could be over fermented dough, inadequate kneading or over proofing.
Overly moist or sticky – Possibly the flour used was from sprouted wheat, or excessive humidity during proofing.
Texture that is to dense or compressed – Excessive milk or fat can cause this problem along with over moulding, under proofing the dough and having the oven too hot.
Bread that’s too crumbly – can be a the result of over or under fermented dough, too slack or too tight dough and too much or too little fat. Other factors can include inferior quality flour, or under mixed or under baked dough.
The list of things that can go amiss when baking bread goes on and on, so if you can make a fairly decent loaf, you are to be congratulated. Of course, there isn’t much need to make your own bread as the shops are full of every kind of bread you could ever want. There is farmhouse, French stick, wholemeal, seeded, rye, ciabatta and many more readily available and baked to perfection. Most are made from top quality wheat and flour that is processed in highly functioning flour mills.