How to Easily Improve Your Bakery’s Bread?

 

Does it bother you that bakeries business can make such amazing bread but your bread just doesn’t taste or feel the same? Well, you are not alone and we are here to help you out. To put it simply, you are using all the wrong tools for the wrong purpose.

Bakeries just have much better tools and they know how and when to use them. They use commercial combi ovens that run hotter than yours and cook the bread with either radiant heat or steam. Can your oven do that? Quality bakeries also have tools to check for their protein content and use enzymes to condition the dough. That is why they have such vibrant looking bread.

But you don’t need to worry as you can sneak past those tools and still get the same quality of bread. Here are some clever tips to make better bread in less time without spending too much on tools.

Keep Your Recipe Simple

This may sound very easy and the fact is that it is. What does bread consist of? Flour, salt, water, and yeast. When you start, just keep your recipe confined to those ingredients. Always follow directions because measurements are supposed to be accurate when you are baking anything. As much as you will love some recipes, do yourself a favour and discard some of the outdated ones. There has been so much going on in baking and new recipes are better. Get a cookbook for your assistance.

Keep Track of Your Progress

Whenever you bake bread, keep a record of how it went. Takedown notes of how a particular ingredient affected the taste texture and consistency of the bread. Are there any specific techniques that you found to be effective? Write them down. The thing is that we easily forget what we did in the last month or so. So chances are that you must have baked awesome bread and are now struggling to find the perfect balance for your ingredients to make the same quality bread. If you only took down notes, it would have been much easier. Taking down notes helps to teach you a lot more than you think.

Do the Dough

The dough rises with yeast. It is a live enzyme that helps in fermentation. If you use a lot of yeast, your dough will rise much quicker. But there is a catch. If you allow your dough to rise too quickly, chances are that it will not develop the intended flavour. The key is to let the dough rise slowly. Refrigerating or using cooling ingredients like cold water can retard fermentation and allows the dough to develop its flavours.

Read also: What is Ghost Kitchen Concept?

A Few Helpful Tips:

1. For an artisan rustic looking loaf, dust it as much as you can.
2. Use egg wash to turn your bread golden brown.
3. Using milk wash in the last minutes of baking can give a glossy brown look.
4. Brushing the loaf with oil before baking will make the bread crisper.
5. Slash your bread 15 minutes before baking to achieve the ultimate artisan look.
6. If you are making a chewy crust, steam your bread before baking it and then bake with dry heat to remove excess moisture.