Why Does Dough Puff Up When You Bake It? (2024)

FAQs

Why Does Dough Puff Up When You Bake It? ›

As yeast cells feed on sugars, they produce carbon dioxide gas and ethyl alcohol in a chemical process known as fermentation. The carbon dioxide gas released by the process of fermentation gets trapped in the sticky, elastic dough, causing it to “puff up" or rise.

The bread puffs up during baking because the yeast go crazy with the high temperature in the oven. The process of yeast eating the sugars and burping out carbon dioxide gets faster and faster the hotter and hotter it gets, until at a certain temperature the yeast all die off.

A leavening agent is a substance that causes dough to expand by releasing gas once mixed with liquid, acid or heat. Rising agents give baked goods optimal volume, texture and crumb and can include baking soda or baking powder, whipped egg whites or cream, active or instant dry yeast, and even steam.

When you add yeast to water and flour to create dough, it eats up the sugars in the flour and excretes carbon dioxide gas and ethanol — this process is called fermentation. The gluten in the dough traps the carbon dioxide gas, preventing it from escaping. The only place for it to go is up, and so the bread rises.

As the temperature of the cooking dough rises, the yeast eventually dies, the gluten hardens, and the dough solidifies. Et voilà! Bread! For more about bread science, check out these links !

Yeast mixed with dough requires an environment free from oxygen. This helps yeast to form ethanol and carbon dioxide which results in the puffing of dough. This is an example of anaerobic respiration, which takes place in the absence of oxygen.

Puff pastry consists of dozens of paper-thin layers of dough separated by cold butter. As this pastry bakes, steam created from the water in the dough and butter makes the dough rise up and pull apart to create that flaky, many-layered crunch we all crave.

If you want to keep the inside from rising as much as the edges, just use a paring knife to score a border. Don't cut the dough all the way though! Use a fork to prick the dough. The pastry will still be light and flaky with the edges puffed up and the center will stay down.

puff pastry in American English

1. flaky pastry having many thin, separate layers of dough. 2. the dough used to make this pastry, into which butter is folded to form the layers.

In the oven, the water in the layers of dough (and some water in the butter) turns into steam. This steam has just enough force to puff up each thin sheet of dough before evaporating into the oven. What's left behind is a delicate shell of airy pastry.

What reaction causes dough to rise? ›

Yeast and sugar produce carbonic gas through fermentation. As the yeast consumes the sugar, it produces alcohol (ethanol) and carbonic gas (carbon dioxide) as waste products. The trapped carbon dioxide makes the dough rise, and the alcohol evaporates during the baking process.

It's when bread dough is left to ferment — the yeast (commercial yeast or sourdough culture) consumes the sugars and starches in the dough and expels carbon dioxide — which causes the dough to expand as it traps the carbon dioxide within its strong and stretchy gluten network.

Sugar Reacts With Heat and Proteins to Create the Perfect Crust. You know your cake is done baking when you pull it out of the oven and see that perfect golden brown crust on top. That sweet, toasted crust is the result of a chemical reaction between sugars and proteins called the Maillard reaction.

“If the dough has risen too long, it's going to feel fragile and might even collapse as you poke it,” says Maggie. If this is the case, there's a chance you can save your dough by giving it a quick re-shape. Learn more about this fix in our blog on saving overproofed dough.

The second proving has given the bread more elasticity, and made it harder to deflate the air.

leavening agent, substance causing expansion of doughs and batters by the release of gases within such mixtures, producing baked products with porous structure. Such agents include air, steam, yeast, baking powder, and baking soda.

Pie weights are little weights used to fill the inside of the blind baked pie crust, to help stop the middle puffing up in the oven. You line the chilled pie crust with crumpled parchment paper, then fill the crust up to the edges of the crimps using pie weights.

Overproofed is when the dough has rested too long and the yeast has continued making carbon dioxide while the strength of the dough (gluten bonds) have begun to wear out. The dough will look very puffy, but when you touch it or move it you may notice it deflate or sag.

Enzymes in yeast ferment sugar forming carbon dioxide and ethanol. The carbon dioxide makes the bread rise, while the ethanol evaporates when the bread is baked.

Put simply, retarding dough is the process of slowing down the final rising in the bread-making process. This is easily done by proofing bread overnight in the refrigerator since the cold slows down the rise. It has its benefits, including adding flavor and allowing you to bake the bread at a later time.