Curiosity about dry milk in sourdough bread???
I have a start and the recipe I'm using is one that my mother and grandmother have used for years so I've never seen a reason to change it considering it's one I like and it's easy. It only consists of baking soda, eggs, flour, starter, and sugar... Not much to it I know but it works for me.... Anyway a few weeks ago I was looking up some yeast bread recipes and I noticed a lot of them had the ingredient dry milk in them. Well I tried the recipe and now I have oodles of dry milk just sitting there and I don't know what to do with it. What exactly does dry milk do for bread? Does it make it raise better, make it softer, denser, etc? Obviously it adds some nutritional value, but does it do anything else??? Also do I need to add water or do I just add the dry milk and call it good. Anyone have any comments?
Dry milk is easier and quicker to use than regular milk...no scalding and cooling.
It improves the texture of the bread crumb... making it softer, more cake like.
Using dry milk instead of regular milk will keep the crust from getting too soft as with regular milk.
I know this is not a concern with most people but where I live it is a 30 minute drive to the nearest grocery store. I use dry milk in all my baking to save my liquid milk for drinking. I just add the milk powder with the dry ingredients then add the same amount of tap water as the recipe calls for milk.
Dry milk will stay good on the shelf for a very long time but personally I go through quite a bit of it.
on hand. It just tastes so much better to me but, I know, has more fat content.
Someone hinted to me that being caseine an emulsifier it has some positive effect on the dough, mostly the capacity to protect starch granules from staling for a longer time. Since milk powder has roughly 35% of proteins (most of which caseine) you can decide how much caseine you want in your dough without adding an amount of liquids that the flour couldn't hold.
Moreover, milk powder dissolved in water is much more convenient than plain milk for bakers because it takes much less space and doesn't expire. Same argument for pasteurized yolks instead of plain eggs.
All of this is hearsay, don't consider me responsible if this information is wrong :-)
Well, just after I made this post I decided to mix down my start so I could make bread tonight. I figured I might as well do 2 loaves one with non-fat dry milk and one without just to see if there was a difference. I was amazed. The crust is softer and the inner "white" part was much more "fluffy" and soft. Exactly what I was hoping for thank you so much for the comments everyone. I was very pleased with the bread made tonight =D.
Please grimeswh, can you specify the doses of all ingredients? Did you dissolve dry milk in water or did you add it to the flour?
I’m just starting to get into bread making but I have been making sourdough waffles and pancakes for decades. Non-fat dry milk is an important ingredient to my recipes. (Lately I’ve been using dry buttermilk with much success.) I haven’t used it in bread. I always use it dry. Thank you to all the posters to this thread. I’ll try dry milk in my bread.