What makes bread chewy

The berries still need to soak. You could make the sourdough with the berries instead of the flour and add the flour to the final dough. But with berries I cannot estimate when they are really fully fermented.

Thanks Adrian. I have been really focused on the gluten developed at this stage of my learning, like you have described. And it definitely has helped some. I was thinking about ings actually. I will try a little bit of gluten and the durum flour to start. Next berries :. If by pan loaves ya also mean sandwich type loaves then soft soft soft is the desired result, I bet something with less enrichments, baked at a hotter temp on a stone with steam as opposed to in pans might possibly be more to your fancy.

WoodenSpoon, you are right. I think that's where I am trying to go. And by less enrichments do you mean leave out any fat, sweetner and dairy? This is going to sound crazy, but I stumbled upon some Anna typo 00 Italian flour a while back.

It is extremely soft, around 9. It bakes really chewy pizza crusts with yeast and chewy sandwich loafs with sourdough. Prior to this, I would bake with the hardest flour I could get and it surprised me to get such fine bread from such soft flour.

I have a hunch that not all soft flours in the US would do this. I suppose the Anna flour is grown from a wheat not available here in the USA and is milled in a different way. You can check out cento. They have a recipe for ciabatta that I tried minus the oil and they were as chewy as all get out. It's expensive though. Thank you for the link and letting me know about the flour. I didn't even know of that website though I see that product line often. By the ciabtta did you mean the chef Cento Simple Italian Bread?

Seems like a good recipe to try. But I could not find the Anna flour on the site. I am not so sophisticated yet to fully understand and appreciate the quality of different flours, but I am getting there!

I will try it out at some point soon. Can you help me find the page where the four is? Thank you! Higher protein flours generally have a higher gluten content in them like bread flour or strong flour. So, if you dislike the gummy texture you might want to go with a blend of flours that will have a lower protein content. Its recommended to use a baking stone, preheat it to give the loaf a push in the right direction which also seems to stop the crumb being dense at the bottom.

Gummy or sticky bread is often the result of an undone bread. One of the ways to avoid this problem is to use a thermostat to check the internal temperature of the loaf. I wrote a great article about the thermometer I like to use and how it could up your bread baking game.

You can check it out right here. The bread is not set before the oven is turned off — in this case there isnt really anything you can do- its a lost cause. If the bread is undercooked you are in a much better place. It wont be perfect but at least it wont be soggy, sticky and underbaked. What you want is your finger to leave a mark and have thedough push back slowly almost to its original shape. Scoring matters: Always remember that in addition to making your bread picture perfect scoring provides a valuable service to loaves during baking.

Oven temperature is too hot. Sometimes we can be too eager to provide that initial blast of heat for our loaf in the first few minutes of the bake that we seem to forget that overheating can cause real damage. This is one of the most common mistakes and one of the major causes of gummy bread. In the end, we aspire for the perfect gelatinized structure. It gives the bread the mouthfeel most of us like. So please let your bread cool for at least hours before cutting into it I would go for longer.

Acidity can be increased through the use of more pre-ferments and a longer fermentation time. It is possible to reverse the staling process in bread by reheating the bread to its core to allow the starches to gelatinize again, making the loaf softer and less chewy in texture.

However, once this is done, be sure to consume the reheated bread quickly as staling will happen much more rapidly when the bread is cooled. Nothing smells better than the wheaty aroma of freshly baked goods; I enjoy it so much that I decided to quit my day job as a management consultant to teach others about the delicate art of baking!

What is a Pate Fermentee? Skip to content. Mixing and kneading develops gluten structure of dough The act of mixing or kneading the dough aligns glutenin and gliadin protein found in the flour to form gluten network in the dough.

To increase the chewiness of your sourdough bread, add 1 to 2 more minutes to your mixing time. To decrease the chewiness of your sourdough bread, reduce mixing time by 1 to 2 minutes. Folding develops gluten structure Another way of developing chewiness in our sourdough is to incorporate more folds during bulk fermentation.

To increase the chewiness of your sourdough bread, increase number of folds by 1. To decrease the chewiness of your sourdough bread, decrease number of folds by 1. Autolyse develops gluten structure without mechanical mixing The autolyse process enables your sourdough to develop in gluten without any mechanical mixing.

Since autolyse helps to develop gluten, it will make your sourdough more chewy in texture. To increase the chewiness of your sourdough bread, use the autolyse method.

To decrease the chewiness of your sourdough bread, do not use the autolyse method. Acidity tightens the gluten network The difference between a regular bread and a sourdough bread is in its acidity. High protein flour causes chewiness Protein content in flour directly correlates to the amount of gluten that will be present in the dough when it is mixed.

Very wet and very dry doughs produce a loaf with less chewiness It is more difficult for gluten to develop when the dough is excessively wet or dry, hence when dough is excessively wet or dry, the chewiness of your loaf decreases. Fats, oils and sugar reduces chewiness Some sourdough formulas calls for the addition of fats, oils and sugar, all these ingredients makes it harder for strong gluten strands to develop, and often result in a less chewy texture of a baked loaf.

Stale bread becomes hard and chewy Bread turns stale after about days. Continue Reading.