BettyR
Senior Cook
I keep getting these holes in my bread. The taste and the texture are perfect but I keep getting these cavernous holes; can anyone tell me what I’m doing wrong?
That explains why my bread is better sometimes than others!You may not be kneading it enough and when you make the loaf, you really must smack the thing to get all the air out. My mom taught me this. I'm telling you, if she was mad at dad, her bread was perfect.
Disclaimer. I know nothing about baking and this came from my breadmachine recipes cookbook;
Too much water was used
Too much yeast was used or yeast was accelerated by hot humid weather or overheated ingredients
Salt was omitted
Good pic BTW.
You may not be kneading it enough and when you make the loaf, you really must smack the thing to get all the air out. My mom taught me this. I'm telling you, if she was mad at dad, her bread was perfect.
You should knead it longer. When I make my bread, after I knead it, I use a rolling pin to express as many air bubbles as I can. Rarely have any air pockets.
Can't think of what is causing your problem, Betty. I haven't kneaded bread by hand in almost 10 years. Use my bread machine to do that.
I'm doing that.
Now that I think about it, Betty, your problem may be letting the dough rise too long. Since you are kneading properly, I would cut the rise time and see what happens.
I had the same problem when I first started trying to make loaves of bread. The rising times given were always too long - maybe it's because Texas is warmer? Anyway, I gave up timing my rise and just let the dough rise til it's doubled. I use a square, straight-sided food storage container that has graduated marks on one side so I can see when it's doubled. But before I got that, I just used a square plastic container and measured how far up the dough was when I first put it in and then added that much more and marked the level it should be when doubled in size. I cover mine with saran wrap so I can see at a glance when it's doubled. I hope this solves your problem, too.I think you may be onto something there. The recipe says to let the dough rise for 1 hour after it is shaped; I thought that sounded like a long time but I'm no bread expert so I didn't question the recipe.
I'm going to cut the rise time down to 40 minutes and see what happens.
Thanks for the help.
I had the same problem when I first started trying to make loaves of bread. The rising times given were always too long - maybe it's because Texas is warmer? Anyway, I gave up timing my rise and just let the dough rise til it's doubled. I use a square, straight-sided food storage container that has graduated marks on one side so I can see when it's doubled. But before I got that, I just used a square plastic container and measured how far up the dough was when I first put it in and then added that much more and marked the level it should be when doubled in size. I cover mine with saran wrap so I can see at a glance when it's doubled. I hope this solves your problem, too.
Yea and it was pretty warm here today.
I'm going to give this a try; thanks for the help.