Kneading your dough develops the gluten, which in return, forms a more reliable gluten network that accelerates the rate of the yeast fermentation. The structure of gluten plays a massive part in how your bread is formed and the gas production it creates is what develops the air pockets in bread, allowing it to rise.
These gases get trapped inside the dough buy the mesh the gluten makes. This is what causes your bread to be airy and fluffy. This mesh is formed by kneading the dough. If you do not knead a dough enough you do not give your bread a chance as the gluten did not have enough time to build that mesh.
The carbon dioxide gas created by yeast is what gives bread its airy texture, and the alcohol, which burns off during baking, leaves behind an important component of bread's flavor.
5- Knead your dough for longer. The dough's gluten network develops over time during the first rise but can be accelerated by kneading. We can reduce or even eliminate the bulk fermentation stage by kneading dough intensively. The result is well-aerated, lighter bread that's made quickly.
Final answer: Carbon dioxide gas is given off during the fermentation of sugar and it makes the bread soft and fluffy.
Dense or heavy bread can be the result of not kneading the dough mix properly –out of many reasons out there. Some of the other potential reasons could be mixing the yeast & salt together or losing your patience while baking or even not creating enough tension in the finished loaf before baking the bread.
For a fluffy bread texture, the key is to let the bread rise long enough. Now, you may be wondering “how long does it take for bread to rise?” The short answer is that it depends on the temperature of your kitchen. For bread to rise, yeast must be activated, and yeast is very sensitive to temperature.
If your dough feels dense and tough to handle when you stop the mixer, it is a sign that it is becoming over-kneaded. Over-kneaded dough can become very hard to work with and produce a more flat and chewy bread.
My bread is like a brick – it has a dense, heavy texture
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.
Kneading for 10-12 minutes by hand or 8-10 minutes in a mixer are the general standards; if you've been massaging the dough for that length of time, you can be pretty confident that you've done your job.
Yeast is too hot Yeast may have been dissolved in water that was too hot, or the liquid ingredients in the recipe may be too hot, causing the yeast to die. Yeast needs to be warm - not too hot, not too cold. Yeast is too cold If the other ingredients are too cold, it could cause some of the yeast to die.
Baking soda and baking powder are more common in recipes for cookies, cakes, and quick breads, and they are responsible for giving baked goods the light, fluffy, porous structure that makes them delicious.
Leavened bread just seems to taste and bake much better with two or more knead & rise cycles. The knead process layers and stretches out the gluten to make a smooth, consistent texture which will hold together when baked; it also traps the yeast gas (CO2) as fine bubbles in the dough.
The purpose of kneading any dough is to develop gluten, and incorporate micro bubbles into the mass of the dough which will inflate during proofing and baking. The more a dough is kneaded, the tighter and more regular a baked loaf's crumb will become. Sandwich breads are kneaded more.
There's something magical about the bread you get at your local bakeries - they're always sooo soft and fluffy. Many of these breads, especially packaged ones, are made with a ton of chemical additives such as calcium propionate, amylase, and chlorine dioxide which help keep them soft, light, and fluffy for days.
“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.
You can gently deflate the dough, reshape it, and set it to rise again. Watch it very carefully, as this third rise will go quite quickly and probably won't be as high.
If the bread dough is over-kneaded, it will not rise in the oven because the stiff gluten prevents the gasses from inflating it.
If your dinner rolls aren't fluffy it could be because of one of two reasons. Either, you added too much flour or you possibly used all bread flour. Alternately, not giving your dinner rolls enough time to proof and get puffy before baking could yield dense rolls.
Adding salt prevents the yeast from reproducing too quickly, thus allowing you to control the rate at which the dough ferments.
Baking with oil not only requires less work, and results in fewer dirty dishes, than butter, but it also produces tender, moist baked goods that get better with age and boast an impressively long shelf-life.
As you knead the dough, however, these proteins begin to line up and form chains of amino acids which creates a matrix within the dough. It's this matrix that allows the dough to rise which makes the dough soft and chewy instead of hard like cardboard.
The fat and lactose in milk help with tenderizing the crumb of the bread making it softer and sweeter. The crust of the bread also gets more caramelization.