Why crumbly bread

The rate at which moisture is lost in the oven plays a big role in the dryness of the baked loaf. The more moisture is loss during baking, the drier the crumb becomes which contributes to a crumbly texture.

Here are some of the factors that affects moisture loss during baking:. Cooling your sourdough bread is important after baking as it allows the baked bread to retain its moisture when it is sliced open. A hot sourdough bread that came out fresh from the oven, has a significant amount of its moisture content in a gaseous state. Cooling your sourdough bread allows these gaseous moisture to condensate back into their liquid state and is reabsorbed back into the crumb of the loaf, resulting in a moist crumb.

If we do not allow the loaf to cool down sufficiently before cutting, the moisture in the bread will dissipate as it is in a gaseous state, resulting in a loaf that is initially moist, but quickly becomes dry and crumbly.

Give your sourdough at least 4 hours of cooling to ensure that it retains as much moisture as possible, preventing it from becoming dry and crumbly too quickly. The appropriate cooling times differs depending on the size of the loaf, shape of the loaf, the room temperature and the type of flour used.

I have written a comprehensive guide on cooling sourdough bread which explains how all these factors affect cooling times. 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. You can also try adding an extra tablespoon of butter or oil to improve the moisture content of your bread. A high temperature causes the yeast to become more active.

If the room that you are using to make bread or prove the dough is too hot, this will make yeast more active and cause crumbs once the bread is done baking.

Besides room temperature, the oven temperature can also affect the texture of your bread. Even adding too much hot water at the beginning of the bread-making process, when you are trying to dissolve your yeast, will affect the texture of the final product. First, you should only dissolve yeast at a temperature of to degrees Fahrenheit.

Any hotter and the yeast will become overactive. You should also take care not to bake your bread at a temperature that is too hot. Many home ovens are imprecise, so you can invest in an oven thermometer to ensure that your oven is actually heating food to the temperature you set. Finally, you should make sure that the room you are baking in is not too hot.

If it is a hot day outside and you must bake bread, adjust your proving times to be shorter so that the yeast does not overdevelop. Sometimes, even the actions you take after the bread is done baking can affect the bread. When you take the bread out of the oven, it is not finished baking.

The steam that is trapped inside has to finish baking the dough to the right texture. Wait until it cools to slice the bread to allow the texture to become cohesive. You should also use a serrated bread knife to minimize crumbling. If you only notice that your bread is crumbly a day or two after baking, that means that it is stale.

Homemade bread goes stale faster than store-bought bread, so it will form crumbs sooner. If you cannot eat all the bread you make right away, make sure that you store it properly. Wrap it tightly the day after baking, and store any pieces you want to use later in the freezer. This article just listed several factors that affect bread texture, any one of which could be affecting your loaf. Sometimes, the solution will be apparent. For example, if the last time you made bread, you completely left out the salt and then it turned out crumbly, you know what you need to do next time.

Other times, you may not be sure where you went wrong during the bread-making process. In that case, you may need to engage in a little trial and error and make adjustments each time you make a new loaf.

Some bakers record each attempt in a notebook where they note what they did differently each time, which could also help you. The last thing you want when making bread is to create a loaf that will crumble in your hands. Ideally, you want bread that is perfectly seasoned, light, and airy, but with enough structure to support a sandwich.

There are many ways that the bread-making process could go wrong because the chemical reaction that forms it requires a precise ratio of ingredients, the right environment, and perfect timing. One small mistake could leave you with a crumbly loaf. Adding the wrong amount of flour, yeast, salt, or fat could create a bread loaf that falls apart in your hands. Even the best bread-making technique won't help if your flour is low in gluten-forming proteins. All-purpose flour in the South tends not to be as "strong" as in the North, for example, and whole-wheat flour creates less gluten than white.

Most other grains contain little or no gluten, so multi-grain loaves can be especially problematic. You can tilt the odds back in your favor by using bread flour, which has more gluten than all-purpose. You can also purchase gluten flour , or vital wheat gluten , at health stores. This is a concentrated form of gluten, and even a spoonful added to your batch will improve its rise and texture dramatically. A well-kneaded loaf made with gluten-rich flour can still fail, often because of misfortune as the bread rises or "ferments.

If you allow the yeasts to thrive too freely, they begin to generate more alcohol. This weakens the gluten and creates unwelcome flavors and aromas. If your bread is low, crumbly and smells sour , this is probably where you've gone wrong. Using too much yeast is a common cause. Unless you're making a sweet bread, the recipe shouldn't call for more. Cutting back on salt is another frequent reason for over-fermentation.

Salt inhibits the growth of yeast, and recipes call for an amount that will allow the yeast to reproduce slowly but steadily. Windowpane Test — Hold a piece of dough and stretch it until you can get it paper-thin without it tearing. You should be able to see light through it. Good bread is made using a bread flour with a high protein content because that protein forms gluten. Try using a strong bread flour over anything else.

This contains more protein and creates a much stronger gluten network. You may just be following a recipe, but everyone has a different oven and environment, so your bread will likely cook at a different rate to the original recipe.

Inactive yeast can lead to a dense, crumbly, and disappointing loaf of bread. Make sure to test that your dried yeast is active every time by stirring it into some lukewarm water and letting it sit there for minutes.

You want to account for this by adding slightly more water to your recipe and keeping your dough in an airtight container.