What Causes Bread to Become Flat?

When you open the oven door or raise the lid of your bread machine, you hope to regard a perfect loaf with a lovely risen dome, golden and crusty. With a bit of beginner’s luck combined with careful measuring, you may do just fine. But if you encounter sad little bricks in your bread pans, it’s time -- even if they taste good -- for a bit of detective work to figure out what’s going awry.

Perfect Measuring

Good volume in your bread loaves requires everything to be balanced just so in your ingredients. For example, you need sufficient yeast and liquid ingredients to bring a nice lift to your flour. Too little of either yeast or water and oil or butter can result in flat bread. Too much yeast can lead the loaf to rise and then fall. Too much salt can also lead to poor volume, notes culinary author Wayne Gisslen in “Professional Baking.” Take your time measuring the ingredients, and use the proper tools; wet and dry measuring cups are not interchangeable. For the utmost accuracy, use a scale for dry ingredients if the recipe provides weights. To measure water and other liquids, set a glass measuring cup on a counter and carefully study the line at eye level; this allows a high degree of accuracy.

Careful Technique

Your preparation of the dough needs attention, too. When you use a bread machine, you don’t have to worry about over- or under-mixing. With hand-kneaded dough, as long as you get the dough past the loose, pudding stage and into a shaped ball, your loaf should rise nicely. You're unlikely to over-knead the dough by hand, as your arms would probably fall off first. But it's easy to over-knead dough in a stand mixer, cautions recipe editor Emma Christensen of The Kitchn.

Let Every Flour Bloom

Certain flours can be altogether too heavy to rise well on their own. A loaf entirely of whole wheat or rye won’t rise as much as if you mix it 50-50 with bread flour. The highest-rising loaves use bread flours, and the densest loaves are made with whole-grain flours. Avoid soft or “weak” flours, such as cake or pastry flour, which lack the protein necessary to rise bread.

Advanced Solutions

If you still need some advanced troubleshooting, check the accuracy of your oven temperature -- it may be too hot. Also, check the expiration date of your yeast. It may be old and losing potency, especially if you haven’t kept it in the freezer, where it lasts indefinitely. Chlorine-free water can improve results, notes King Arthur Flour. And if you are using a bread machine, separating the salt from the yeast in the baking pan can help. At altitude, mix more liquid and less yeast into your dough, and bake the loaf at a higher temperature.

CB Blogger