Monday, January 03, 2011

Bread differences with minor ingredient changes

This one seems worth a blog post.

The following picture shows baking results for two loaves of bread. The preparation procedure was identical, and the ingredients were almost identical.


The ingredient difference between the left and right-hand loaves amounted to a couple of tablespoons more water, 1/4 tsp. more yeast, and 1/4 tsp. less salt. Flour and yeast were both from the same batch.

So you can see why people who prefer to just throw everything in a pot and let it boil would be turned off by baking.

2 comments:

richard said...

Not sure what you ingrediant changes amount to in percentage, but I would speculate that perhaps the original salinity was too high and interfered with grwoth of the yeast.

Alternatively, maybe just a bit more water would have worked fine or maybe the batch of yeast was different.

There may have also been a differen in ambient temperature while the loaves rose.

mattbg said...

Those are both bread machine loaves, so a lot of the environmental stuff is pretty well controlled! It is often easier to get a better rise in the summer when the house is so much warmer, but these were made within a few hours of each other.

The yeast was from the same jar.

But, I think you are right about both the salinity and the water. Because the larger loaf was made with slightly less salt, slightly more water, and a bit more yeast.