Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Ingredients--Milk

Bread recipes that call for fluid milk usually say to scald the milk--bring it to 180F. I have a couple of books about bread science and food chemistry that I respect a great deal more than bread cookbooks. One of them explained that the proteins in milk interfere with formation of the gluten structure in bread unless the milk is cooked. That sounds reasonable.

As far as I can tell, though, nonfat dry milk for home use isn't brought to this temperature. I've used it very successfully in breadmaking, so I see a possible contradiction here, though it's possible that something else in the processing affects the milk protein in a way that would keep it from interfering with gluten.

Anyway, I plan to test this in the future--two identical loaves, one with scalded milk and one with nonfat dry milk, to see whether the dry milk performs less well.

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