We use this one for instant accuracy. If it sounds hollow, the bread is properly baked. The dough can become airy and fluffy only when it has had enough time to rise. The final proof of the bread is especially important; it is recommended to use a proofing basket for the final rise for a beautifully developed dough. Typically, dough rises twice for perfect bread, but you can even rise your bread 3 times or more.
Neither under-proofed nor over-proofed dough is light and airy. To check if your dough has risen to the right degree and can go into the oven, do the poke test. Poke the dough with your finger and watch what happens. If the dough comes back to its initial shape quickly, it needs more time to rise.
If it recovers slowly, then your bread is well-proofed and ready to go into the oven. For the bread to come out soft and fluffy, you need to make sure that the yeast ferments properly. It is not only the temperature of your kitchen that affects the activation of the yeast.
You also need to add the yeast to warm water to get it working. Aside from the temperature of the water, you need to pay attention to the date on the yeast packaging. If the yeast is expired and not active, no matter what you add it into, you can never get a fluffy loaf of bread.
Scoring seems to be the easiest step in the bread baking process — all you need to do is make a few cuts on the bread before baking it. But the truth is, there is more to scoring than you think. If you score the bread too deeply or get carried away and make too many cuts on it, the dough will lose the gas collected in it. Thus, you will end up with dense and heavy bread. To make the bread fluffy, score it as soon as the proofing process is over.
Make a few cuts into the top layer of the dough and put it quickly into the oven. Doing this will prevent the dough from exploding in the oven and releasing all the gases collected in it. When your freshly baked bread is finally out of the oven, you may be tempted to cut it immediately and give it a try. But you need to let the bread cool before you cut it. Moreover, you need to cool it properly to avoid dense and chewy bread. Once you take the bread out of the oven, let it cool without covering it with a towel.
As the bread cools, excess moisture escapes from it, resulting in soft and fluffy bread. By covering the bread with a towel while it cools, you trap the moisture inside. This makes the bread dense and heavy. Cooling the bread right is the only thing you can do to improve the texture of your bread after you have baked it. Aside from being dense, the bread may also come out very chewy.
One of the main reasons for a chewy dough is using flour that contains a very high amount of protein. But using flour with a protein content that is too high may result in a chewy dough. There are two ways you can make your bread less chewy. First, you can use a different flour with a lower protein content. Alternatively, you can add some low-protein flour to bring the texture to balance.
All-purpose or plain flour , a staple in every kitchen, can easily save the day and make the bread less chewy when added to the dough in combination with high-protein flour. You can find numerous bread recipes that call for eggs, milk, and other ingredients that contain fat and can improve the texture of your dough. It should sound hollow and almost have an echo to it. Everyone has a different oven and environment, so the time that you have to cook your bread is likely slightly different from that in the recipe.
The type of oven you use may be different too. Some people like baking in fan ovens whilst most bake in non-fan ovens. The temperature a bread cooks at is different for many different types of bread. Some need extremely high temperatures to cook whilst others cook at a more comfortable temperature for longer.
The ingredients you use when baking need to be near exactly the same as the recipe. Some people compress the flour into their cups and some people spoon it in, so there is so much variation.
Using cups often leads people to make a dough that has far too much flour and therefore ends up dry and dense. The best thing you can do for the most consistent results is to use the weights of every ingredient.
One big thing that can make bread chewy is using a flour that has too much protein. Keep in mind that almost all original bread had a chewy texture.
There are plenty of recipes out there that add ingredients like eggs, milk, or some kind of fat to make the overall texture lighter and softer than the traditional kind of bread. You can even try implementing tangzhong paste, a Japanese ingredient made by mixing flour and water and turning it into a sort of roux. This is an ingredient added to Japanese Hokkaido milk bread to make it so light and fluffy. All good bakers have been in the same situation as you. You put your loaf in the oven with high hopes and you end up being disappointed.
Baking bread seems easy on paper, but there are so many techniques that go into making good bread. It takes time and effort, but you need to make mistakes to progress.
The flour could have too low a protein content, there could be too much salt in the bread recipe, you did not knead it or leave it to prove for long enough or you could have killed the yeast by leaving the dough to rise in a place that was too hot. If the bread has a coarse, open texture then the dough could have been too wet, over-proved or the oven temperature was not high enough. If the bread has an uneven texture with large holes then the dough might not have been knocked back properly ,which could potentially leave large air bubbles, or the dough could have been left uncovered during rising.
If your bread has a sour, yeasty flavour and smells of alcohol then you have either used too much yeast.
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