Baking is not as simple as cooking. Cooking is about freedom and room for creativity and adaptability. Baking on the other hand involves more science, with ingredients coming together in a particular sequence, with a specific mixing technique and time employed. Mixed, kneaded, shaped, the batter or dough is then cooked in an enclosed controlled environment. It is for this reason that on most occasions, recipes for baked goods should be followed closely.
Last week, leading up to the Easter weekend, I posted on Social Media a recipe I had shared with you last year – Cross Buns 2.0. The new recipe was as a result of some research and testing to yield a bun that was soft, not just on the day it was freshly baked but the next day too. And, once reheated properly after refrigeration should be tender still. A friend who used the recipe wrote to say that the flavour was spot on, but her Cross Buns were dense, heavy, and that the next day they needed to be reheated for 30 seconds in the microwave to soften. When I get messages about a recipe that did not work well, I am always interested to find out what went wrong, what, if any, adaptions were made to the entire process, from ingredients, to mixing to temperature to cooking. It is an education and learning process for me too.
My friend informed me of the following:
She kneaded the dough beyond the 5 minutes specified in the recipe.
Instead of melted butter, she mixed cold butter, cut into tiny pieces into the flour with the other ingredients.
The fruits added were not measured and they were a combination of cherries, citrus mixed peel and cranberries.
Let’s take each point one at a time.
Kneading beyond recommended time – Kneading dough is about developing strands of gluten to be stretched and shaped in preparation for cooking and baking. Well worked dough—based on specs of a recipe—results in a tight crumb. While this is required for certain things like say sandwich loaves, it is not always applicable to everything you are making that require kneaded dough. For example, the dough for Guyanese-style paratha roti should not be overworked, the roti will be stiff.
The recommended 5-minute (only) kneading of the dough for the Cross Buns recipe was designed to make a soft rich dough that when baked would yield a bun that was tender and not dry.
Butter in solid form rather than melted – Butter when used to make baked goods has a specific role to play, sometimes as a leavening agent (puff pastry), at times as a flavourful and flaky crust (patties, tarts); to add moisture, tenderness too. Butter in its solid state contains water; when that water is released through the heated process of cooking, it interacts with the other ingredients such as gluten, making the finished product dense.
With melted butter, the water is extracted and when added with other ingredients it coats the proteins and starches during the mixing step and results in a more delicate crumb; a softer crumb. Melted, the butter is distributed evenly throughout the dough.
Adding extra ingredients – Rich dough (dough that includes milk, butter, eggs, sugar) generally takes a longer time to rise to yield the tender crumb needed. With added ingredients such as dried or candied fruit to a rich dough, not only will the rise time be longer but there would be a fight for moisture given that the fruits would be dry. Therefore, only ever put what is recommended in a recipe because it has been tested to have a particular response time to leavening, moisture content, and expected result in the final product. Extras will weigh down the dough making it heavy and dense. The other thing to know is that all dried fruits are not created equal, some retain a certain degree of moisture while others are so dehydrated that added moisture/liquid is needed when making certain things. There is a reason why some recipes recommend plumping up the fruits with things like alcohol before baking.
Cynthia
cynthia@tasteslikehome.org
