Are you looking to improve the flavor of your bread and create the perfect homemade loaf? If so, then we have you covered. There are several simple ways that you can create delicious tasting bread without adding any extravagant ingredients. In fact, some of these tips are so simple they'll leave you wondering why you didn't try them sooner. Keep scrolling to discover how your favorite bakery gets more flavorful bread using simple techniques that can be done in the comfort of your kitchen.
Choose Quality Flours
Possibly the most crucial part of making delicious bread is choosing quality flour. Flour is the main ingredient in bread making. While many experienced bakers know that the quality of flour is important, it's a factor that is often overlooked by novice bakers. Often, new bakers read products labeled "bread flour" and automatically think that it will produce the bakery-quality loaves that they are used to.
If you're searching for flour that gives you something to write home about, it's essential to get it from a quality source. Organic flours and those produced from proper mills, like Bob's Red Mill, are typically of the highest quality. Need help choosing the right bread flour for you? Here are a few flours that we love baking bread with.
Artisan Bread Flour
Novice and advanced bakers alike love our Artisan Unbleached Bread Flour. It's the perfect flour for all of your bread-making needs. Whether you're looking to create a delicious homemade sandwich bread or try your hand at sourdough bread, this premium quality flour is an excellent choice. Milled from U.S. grown wheat and mixed with malted barley flour, it helps yeast and gluten develop correctly, resulting in a light and airy bread that is delicious. The high protein content in this flour makes it the perfect choice whether you're craving a chewy baguette or pizza crust.
Gluten Free Hearty Whole Grain Bread Mix
For a gluten free bread that is both moist and delicious, use our Gluten Free Hearty Whole Grain Bread Mix. Made with several different whole grains and seeds, it's blended with our unique gluten free flour to create the ideal bread loaf. Use it for sandwiches, toast, bread crumbs, hamburger buns and even pizza dough. It's a flavorful and nutritious blend that uses quality ingredients like buckwheat, garbanzo bean flour and sunflower seeds to provide both crunch and flavor. On a vegetarian or vegan diet? Our Gluten Free Vegan Egg Replacer can be used in this recipe to create a loaf that can be enjoyed by nearly everyone.
10 Grain Bread Mix
On the hunt for a flavorful multi-grain bread mix? You've found it. This 10 Grain Bread Mix, will quickly become the best multi-grain bread you've ever baked. Quick and easy to make it yields a delicious dough that features a mild nutty flavor. It's ideal for french toast, sandwiches and many other recipes mixed by hand or with a stand mixer. Versatile, simple and oh-so-delicious, it's a mix that is loved by professional bakers and novice bakers alike.
Give the Dough Time
To achieve a great flavored loaf, be sure to give the dough enough time to rise. While some loaves of bread can take just 40 minutes to rise, others can take up to 48 hours. Allowing time for your bread to rise correctly ensures that more starch is broken down into gluten. This process also releases more flavor from the flour. Bread that is adequately developed enhances not only the flavor of a loaf but also improves the structure.
To ensure that your dough is fully developed, take time to review these quick tips and make sure your mixture passes the test.
Make Sure it Is Smooth
Unmix and un-proofed dough will look shredded and lumpy. Properly kneaded and proofed dough should be smooth and tacky to the touch.
Poke It
If you think that your dough is finished proofing, poke it! Poke the mixture firmly with your finger so that it leaves an indent in the mix. If the indent quickly fills itself in, then your dough is ready, If the indent remains, you should consider re-kneading your dough and letting it rise once again.
Does It Hold Its Shape
When you lift your dough into the air, does it hold its round shape, or does it turn into a sloppy mess? If your mixture remains in a ball-like form when held up, this means that the gluten has been thoroughly worked and is strong enough to be baked. On the other hand, if your dough loses its shape, then it likely requires additional kneading and to be proofed once again.
Use the Refrigerator to Boost Your Dough's Flavor
Like fermenting your dough in a warm environment will help speed up the rising process, fermenting your dough in a cool environment will slow it down. When cooled, the yeast development slows down and allows for more gluten to be created. This results in improved dough structure and releases more flavor into the flour.
Additionally, when dough is fermented slower, the complex starches and sugars can ferment fully. These fermented sugars create an alcohol-based ingredient known as maltose, which works to make the bread taste sweeter while also deepening the aroma.
Use a Pate Ferment
Like mentioned above, like a dough ferments and ages, it begins to develop its flavor profile. During this process, your dough reacts with the environment around it, causing chemical reactions between yeast and any new material introduced to it. By incorporating a piece of starter into a new bread mix, you automatically add its flavor and crumb structure to the bread.
If you're making bread regularly, then it's important to remember to reserve a piece of dough from each batch to use in the next mix. Continuing to add aged dough to your new bread mixes will help boost the flavor profile of your fresh bread and keep the flavor consistent. This process can be repeated as many times as you like and can even carry on through years of bread making.
Add in Additional Ingredients
Last but not least, when it comes to boosting the flavor of your bread, try adding in additional ingredients. Several tasty ingredients like honey, olives and even bananas are used regularly to ramp up the classic bread recipe's flavor. Not only are these ingredients delicious, but when chosen wisely, they can also boost your bread's nutritional value.
Whether you're a fan of sweet bread and looking to create a delicious recipe like this tasty Banana Bread, or you're on the hunt for something more savory like this mouth-watering No-Knead Artisan Olive Bread, whatever bread you're in the mood for, we're confident that there is a recipe for it. Don't believe us? Check out the ingredients we love adding to our bread recipes.
Fat
If you're looking to ramp up the taste of your favorite bread recipe, we recommend adding a bit of fat. A fat like butter, olive oil or coconut oil in small quantities will help your bread achieve a higher rise and it will also boost its flavor by tenfold.
However, when adding fat to your recipes, be careful not to overdo it. While a small amount of fat will help bread rise, too much fat will result in the opposite. When fat is added in large quantities, it will completely change the texture of a loaf and adding too much will result in a loaf soft and low in volume. While low-volume dough can be great for some bread like brioche, it is not an ideal texture for all bread recipes.
Sweetener
Quickly, try adding a malt or honey into the mix to level up your bread's flavor. Malt, a sweetener that is available in powder and liquid form, can easily be added to almost any bread recipe. When choosing a malt to use, it's essential to use a non-diastatic version. Diastatic malt contains active enzymes, which can cause dough to become extremely sticky. A non-diastatic malt does not include these enzymes and will help boost the sweetness of your bread quickly.
Honey is also a natural sweetener that works to lock in the moisture of bread and sweeten it up. When choosing honey to use, we recommend using pasteurized honey. While it may be tempting to purchase raw forms of honey, unpasteurized honey contains bacterial properties that could potentially kill the yeast in your dough and affect your bread's rise.
From sweeteners to quality flour, we hope that this list has helped you determine what gives bread flavor and how you can boost the flavor of your next loaf quickly. Making homemade bread is a process, and though it might take some trial-and-error to get it right, we're confident that once you master homemade bread making, you'll never want to purchase bread from the grocery store again.
When you recommend saving a piece of dough, I'd like to know how and where is best. Could it be frozen?
If you're making bread regularly, it would likely be fine to just keep it in the refrigerator, but I understand that if dough is left to rise in the refrigerator for a week or more, it can develop a sourdough taste (which may or may not be desirable, of course). That may not affect the new loaf if it's a small enough quantity, which leads me to wonder how MUCH previous dough should be added!? Freezing seems a bit drastic, if it isn't necessary, but perhaps it does no harm...?