If the bread is hard, it is likely that less water was added when making the bread, or that it was not proofed enough.

When I have nothing to do, I often make bread by hand. When I first made it, I couldn’t make it well. The resulting bread was very hard and unpalatable. Later, I checked relevant information and asked professionals for advice, and finally found the reason.

Let me share with you my experience and the recipe I used to make bread at that time

1000g bread flour; 180g soft sugar; 10g edible salt; 10g dry yeast; 50g butter; 450g water; Eggs 50g The scene of making bread

I remember very clearly that when I put all the ingredients in the mixing bowl and started kneading the dough, the flour was difficult to form into a ball and gave people a dry feeling. But since it was my first time to make bread, and I didn’t know what the correct dough state should be, I had to bite the bullet and keep going. It took about 30 minutes to finally smooth the dough, and then I started to divide and shape it to make bread. The result was terrible. As you can imagine, the baked bread is very hard, and when cut, it looks like sawn wood, and the residue is particularly obvious. Ask professionals for answers

Through the recommendation of a friend, I met a master baker who specializes in making bread, so I explained the process of making bread to the master in detail, and the master heard me When he said that the dough took a long time to form into a ball, he interrupted my speech and asked: "What is the proportion of water in your recipe?" I was a little confused at the time, thinking, "I don't know the proportion of water, anyway. I just added 450g of water." Then the master told me that the amount of water added for making bread is about 60% (baking percentage).

Later I learned about the concept of baking percentage. The baking percentage is based on the total amount of flour. The amount of other ingredients is converted according to the percentage of flour. For example, if water is added to 60%, it means that 1000g of flour needs to be added. 600g water. Problems that occurred when making bread

1000g of flour was added with 450g of water and 50g of eggs. If the water content of the eggs was regarded as 100%, that would be 500g of water, which would only account for 50% of the weight of the flour, which is a whole difference. After adding 10 points of water, the bread will certainly be hard. Other reasons for hard bread

Later, as I continued to study, I found that hard bread may be caused by other reasons, such as yeast inactivation, insufficient fermentation, no improvers added to the flour, etc. This may cause the bread to become hard. Summary

The summary of hard bread is that the volume of the dough has not become large enough. As long as the volume of the bread can become three times the volume of the dough before proofing, the bread will not be hard.

So we can start from the following aspects: ① Increase the amount of water added; ② Extend the proofing time of the bread; ③ Use highly active yeast and high-sugar resistant yeast; ④ Add some leavening agents, etc.