What Happens When You Add Too Much Flour To Homemade Bread - Tasting Table (2024)

FAQs

What Happens When You Add Too Much Flour To Homemade Bread - Tasting Table? ›

When there's too much flour and not enough liquid, the whole rising process is thrown off. The dryness of the dough will prevent the yeast or another rising agent from activating properly, leading to a stunted rise (or it may not rise at all). The resulting loaf will be dense as well as dry.

Too much flour and not enough water can cause crumbly bread – people often do this if the dough is too sticky and they add more flour rather than kneading through it. Other culprits can be overproving or not kneading enough – the things you need to do to get a good structure.

You will need to use a little flour on your worktop to stop the dough from sticking too much. But there is a fine balance, use too much and you won't be able to get the dough to stick to itself while shaping. I would suggest starting with a very light sprinkle and only adding more if you need to.

A: First, don't just reach for more flour—too much extra flour will make the crust tough, and won't treat the real problem, which is that your butter is too soft.

Using too much flour makes for an extra crumbly bread.

If you're tapping your measuring cup to level out flour as you measure, or you're pushing down the piled-up powder, you'll end up using too much of it. I packed my flour for this loaf, and what I got was a crumbly cake with a dry crust all around.

One way is to add in some extra fat, such as more butter or even an extra egg yolk (which contains fat) — this will make the dough easy to work with again. Another way to fix the problem is to add in a bit of extra liquid, such as milk or water, which will help get the dough back to the consistency it needs to be.

Overmixing is exactly what it sounds like: the process by which a dough or batter gets mixed too much, typically yielding dense, tough, or deflated baked goods. Overmixed doughs and batters may have an unappealing look or feel, which remain just as unappealing when they're baked.

But a flour brush isn't just for spreading flour. It's also a great tool for brushing off excess flour from your dough or work surface. This can be especially useful when you're working with delicate doughs that can be easily over-floured.

If it rolls easily into a ball, you have added enough flour. Don't add more. It is okay if some of the other dough sticks to your fingers at this point. The dough itself may still be a little sticky but if it can roll into a nice ball shape, you don't need any more flour.

Flour lends structure to baked goods, like cakes, biscuits, pastry and bread, with a range in protein content to suit the purpose and desired outcome. Higher-protein flours provide a greater proportion of gluten and a stronger dough for products like bread and the reverse is true for use in cakes and biscuits.

What happens to dough the longer you knead it? ›

The overworked dough will often feel tight and tough. This means that liquid molecules have been damaged and won't stretch properly, causing the bread to break and tear more easily. Conversely, a dough that is underworked will be harder to form into a ball shape.

The bread dough did not rise enough. Whole wheat, cake, self-rising and non-wheat flours such as rye, oat, barley, rice and soy all have too little gluten. Also, self-rising and cake flours are lower in gluten and therefore will not produce the best yeast bread.

Add Sugar

Adding sugar weakens the gluten structure, absorbs water, and eventually makes the bread lighter and softer. As a result, sugar improves the bread's taste, structure and texture. Yeast also eats up sugar to produce carbon dioxide, which raises the dough and makes bread fluffy.

Using too much banana could make your bread heavy and damp in the center, causing it to appear undercooked and unappealing. If you have bananas leftover, you can always freeze them for later use.

If the dough starts sticking to your hands, add a little more flour to your hands, rather than to the dough, so you don't throw off that careful ratio of ingredients in your bread recipe.

Many bakers are hesitant to pre-heat thoroughly because of costs, but then the whole bake is a waste and disappointing because of poor oven spring and a dense loaf. Too much extra flour worked into the dough while folding and/or shaping can cause dense bread.

You can actually add a small amount of wheat gluten to enhance the dough and make it lighter and fluffier. The more gluten, the stronger the dough is. You can purchase vital wheat gluten and replace 1 Tbsp of flour with the vital wheat gluten. Here's a link to Anthony's Premium Vital Wheat Gluten on Amazon.