Ways to Make Homemade Bread Soft and Fluffy

Who doesn’t like a fresh loaf of bread from a local bakery? We all have noticed is that bread making at home is easier, simple, and tastier, but one thing homemade bread lacks is that it is never as soft or as fluffy as loaves of bread from your local bakeries. Bread from bakeries is so light and fluffy, which seems impossible to achieve at home, but not anymore! Our bakers have enlisted the most effective techniques and bread making tips to help you make bakery-like fluffy bread at home.

Soft bread with a moist, close-knit crumb has an amazingly tender texture. It is accomplished by retaining moisture in the crumb that would otherwise exit during cooling. We can also increase the moisture by using more water in the recipe or adding a tenderizing agent to make the gluten soft and fluffy!

Bread Making Tips for Softer Bread

Bread making with simple flour, water, yeast and a pinch of salt seems simple, right? But little change in measurement, bread baking technique or ingredients impacts a lot on how your bread turns out. The perfect way to achieve the fluffiness and tender texture of the bread is also quite simple, just with a few simple changes in your recipes. Let’s start with common bread making mistakes that result in chewy or dry bread with bread making tips to fix them:

1. Use Bread Flour Over All-purpose Flour

All-purpose flour, as its name suggests, is suitable for making all types of baked goods such as cookies, cakes, and bread. It has a lower protein content than bread flour; the high protein in bread flour helps to create more gluten and rise in your baked breads, producing a light and chewy texture. While you can substitute all-purpose flour for bread flour, it is highly recommended to follow the type of flour required by the recipe for optimum results.

A short fermentation is ideal for retaining moisture in the dough and achieving a tightly-knit crumb. Sadly, it means there will be less time for damaged gluten to repair. For softer bread in a quickly made loaf, the flour choice is important. Use high-protein flour from a reliable source to produce a closely-knit gluten structure.

However, a lightly flavoured loaf or roll with a golden orange crust is still delicious and visually appealing. With a longer-proofed artisan-style bread, extending the fermentation time will hydrate the gluten and make softer bread.

2. Ensure the Dough is Well Hydrated

A moist crumb will feel softer to the mouth. A well-hydrated dough allows the gluten to extend properly and promotes a strong gluten network. This means increasing the dough hydration of a recipe makes a softer crumb. A wetter crumb has a softer texture, but increasing the dough’s hydration also increases gluten extensibility which results in larger air pockets in the crumb. Great for certain types of bread, like lean artisan loaves, but bad if we want a crumb that’s compact and fluffy. When we are making bread that has an open crumb, we should consider making it wetter for more softness. But if we are after a closely-knit crumb, it’s best to have a dryer dough, using fats for extra softness.

See Bakers Math (Dough Hydration - soft, firm, stiff doughs)

3. Add Fat to Lubricate the Crumb

If you’ve ripped into a soft loaf of bread to find it tear off in pillowy shreds, you’ve likely encountered a bread dough that includes butter. By introducing fat, such as butter, oil, lard or vegetable fat (and/or other fats like milk and egg yolk), we will get softer results. Fat lubricates and tenderises the gluten to keep it moist and less chewy. They also reduce the browning temperature, which shortens the time it takes for the crust to form. Fats also protect the outer perimeter of the bread during oven spring without the need for additional steam. As fat inhibits starch recrystallization, bread that includes butter will stay soft longer, increasing the loaf’s shelf life.

In a bread recipe, gluten is formed when wheat’s glutenin and gliadin proteins come into contact with water. The proteins multiply and lengthen as dough is kneaded, making it increasingly extensible and elastic. As bread dough proofs, the gluten network is strengthened, and dough will hold its shape. Once a fat like butter is added to bread dough in large quantities, it coats those glutenin and gliadin proteins, resulting in shorter gluten chains. As fat coats those proteins, it can also delay yeast’s consumption of sugar, making for a slower rising dough; but this also makes for a more robust flavor. The exterior crust on such a dough will bake up relatively soft, and the crumb of the loaf will be plush.

It is possible to add too much butter to bread dough. Too much butter will result in a very soft, sticky dough that’s difficult to shape, and bakes up greasy and dense.

When adding butter (or any fat) to bread dough in small quantities, it should be fine to add it along with the other ingredients in the initial dough mix. When adding butter to bread dough in large quantities, it’s best to add it last, after kneading the other ingredients (flour, water, salt, potentially sugar and/or milk) a bit. In fact, the dough should be strengthened enough to pass the windowpane test before butter is added. Once added, butterfat will coat the gluten proteins in the dough, preventing them from bonding to each other as the dough rises. This will ultimately yield the desired tender, pull-apart texture of an enriched dough; but it’s still important to develop some gluten first to structure the loaf. To ensure it incorporates fully, butter should be added to dough slowly, each small amount mixed in entirely before moving onto the next piece.

4. Add Sugar to Soften the Crumb

Sugar provides many of the properties that soft bread endures. It’s a natural tenderizer, and, importantly, it acts as a liquifying agent in the dough. 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. With the addition of sugar, the bread will be softer and keep soft for longer.

5. Add Milk

To make your bread soft and fluffy, another trick used by commercial bakers is replacing water with milk. Milk has fats which make bread softer.

6. Add Eggs

Another bread making tips that can help you create better dough for softer and fluffy bread is by adding eggs. Egg breads have a delicate, tender crumb that tears easily and melts in the mouth. As with other baked goods that rely on egg whites for volume, eggs act as a leavening agent in bread, enhancing rise while inhibiting gluten formation. Using egg enhances the protein of the flour, alongside softening the texture of the bread. Eggs act as the binding agent, make the dough stronger, impart a rich, distinctive flavour and extend the shelf life of bread.

Here are the main types of egg bread:

1. Brioche: Brioche is a buttery yeasted bread from France. Eggs help the dough rise and create a large crumb that's great for soaking up liquids, like a bowl of chocolat chaud (hot chocolate). The egg yolks give the bread a golden interior, and butter adds an extra boost of moisture. The result is a rich, buttery flavor, and deep golden-brown crust.

2. Challah: Challah is a Kosher braided yeast bread that has long been a symbolic centerpiece for Jewish holidays such as Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), Shabbat, and Purim. The simple dough is made with eggs, water, flour, yeast, and salt. The pale yellow color and rich flavor come from the high amount of eggs used in the dough.

3. Italian Easter bread: Traditionally known as pane di Pasqua (Italian for “bread of Easter”), this festive, springtime brioche-style bread is braided and shaped into a wreath, then glazed in sugared almonds, candy sprinkles, and sometimes glaze.

Other egg breads include Portuguese Sweet Bread,

7. Use the Tangzhong Method

Tangzhong method is a process where you create a bit of a roux by cooking some of the flour with water or milk first to gelatinize the gluten before mixing it in with your other ingredients. Note: This does not seem to work well with bread with nuts and dried fruit such as Christmas Stollen. While the bread was very moist, it seemed too moist and was somewhat heavy at the bottom of the loaf.

8. Do Not Over-Knead Your Dough

Insufficient kneading will result in underdeveloped gluten, creating a dense loaf. Yet, over-kneading dough is a common bread making mistake, which makes gluten too tight for bread to rise, resulting in chewy bread instead of fluffy. Kneading correctly is most important to strengthen the gluten and give your bread a perfect texture. While kneading dough, make sure there are no lumps in the mixture and try to create a smooth dough.

The easiest way to check if your dough is appropriately kneaded is by taking a ‘Poke Test’. Whenever you feel your dough is fully kneaded, firmly poke in with a finger, and if it is filled back quickly and holds its shape, then you don’t need to knead any further. If the indent remains, then continue kneading for a little longer.

9. Proof for longer

One of the simplest causes of overly dense bread is under proofing. Whilst a tighter crumb is achieved, the bread won’t be light and fluffy. The solution is to use the poke test to determine when the dough is ready to bake.

10. Create Steam in Oven

Commercial bread is softer due to the steam process used by bakeries, which is made to keep bread hydrated and fresh. Use cold water in a pan and put it on a rack beneath your bread to create steam.

Mastering how you add water to the oven to produce steam is a key skill in any baker’s toolbox. Steam aids the oven spring and also helps form beautiful crispy crusts. Bread with a delicious soft crumb can be made with or without the inclusion of steam, but a soft crust will only arrive if no steam is added. For a soft crust you’d expect to find in soft rolls or batch bread, don’t add steam. In an oven without steam, the bread will brown faster. This reduces the baking time to trap more moisture in the bread.

11. Reduce Baking Time

One mistake often results in dry and hard bread is over-baking. The less time bread spends in the oven means less moisture will depart. It’s important to consider the baking time when producing any bread. Soft bread will bake faster than crusty bread. Set your oven at the shortest time of the recipe and check if the bread is fully baked when the oven stops. You can check by tapping on the bottom side of the bread. Also, ensure the correct oven temperature while bread making.