The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Dry Milk..

Paddyscake's picture
Paddyscake

Dry Milk..

Is there any reason to use powdered milk versus regular milk? Quite often recipes call for powdered
milk and water. Why can't we just use whole milk? (skim, 1-2% etc?) Does the fat content make
that much difference?

PaddyL's picture
PaddyL

I think that's the general reason to use dry milk over liquid milk.  Br. Rick Curry, S.J., in his Secrets of Jesuit Bread Baking, says that using the liquid milk makes a big difference in flavour, and I've heard on another website, that scalding the milk, then skimming off the skin that forms before adding the warm milk to the dough, really helps give bread more lift.

nbicomputers's picture
nbicomputers

i comes down to milk fat sugar and water

bakeries use dry milk due to the problems of storing large quanities of the fresh item

aslo it is easer to add the dri milk directly to the dough and then add the water later

the milk will rehydrate in the dough and np pre mixing with water is nessesary

Milk contains fat and the fat will affect the finished product in the formula calls for skim milk and you use whole you would need to adjust the formula for the fat in the mill by taking out fat from the mix.. and since fats like butter as not 100 percent fat it you take out say 1 pound of butter to account for the amount of fat in the whole milk remember that buter is only 75 precent fat and the rest water and other dairy stuff like lactous. so in fact if you were trying to adjust for 1 pound of milk fat you have removed only 12 ounces of fat from the formula leaving 4 ounces to much and still have not added the 4 ounce of water that was present in the buter making the mix stiffer. will it work--- maybe but it will not be the same!!!

last the lactouse milk suger has qualities that add several things to baked goods i will not give details here but some of them are crust formation. crust color. sweetness.

and retarding of stailing.

lastly skim milk powder and whole milk powder are both used in bakeries and many times added to fresh milk to increase the richness of the fresh milk

please forgive the poetic lic. the numbers stated are not acurate just to give a simple example of what would have to be done to adjust a formlua i have the algabra written down someware but it's 5 in the morning so forgive me if i don't get up to look right now

baker---Ret. 

eldil's picture
eldil

Hope this can be of some help. 

 

To replace milk with water

Milk being:
85% Water
10% Milk Solids
5% Butter/ Fat

To replace milk in a recipe that calls for water, multiply the milk in question by the decimal of the water, milk solids, and butter/ fat

Example:

4100g of 0.85 = 3485 of water to be added
4100g x 0.10 = 410g of milk solids to be added
4100 x 0.05 = 205g of butter/ fat to be added

*Milk solids being dry milk powder 

 

To replace Water with Milk

To replace water with milk, find the displacement of milk and butter/ fat (amount to taken out)
Assuming whole milk is composed of 85% water, 10% milk solids, and 5% butter/fat

We know that water is 85% of the milk, so to find the milk needed to replace the water, we divide the water involved with the decimal percentage the water is of the milk (0.85)

To find the amount of milk solids and butterfat to remove from the formula to replace it, multiply the milk by 0.10 to find the milk solids to take out, and by 0.05 to find the butter/ fat to remove.

Example:

Replace 4300g of Water with Milk:

4300g/ 0.85 = 5059g of milk
5059 x 0.10 = 506g of milk solids to take out of the recipe
5059 x 0.05 = 253g of butter/ fat to take out of the recipe

The rebalanced recipe is now short of 506g of milk solids and 253g short of butter/ fat. This is important because milk has extra fats and nutrients that water does not have, having too much of these ingredients will alter the recipe. 

 

Paddyscake's picture
Paddyscake

so I'm thinking that for a loaf or 2 of bread it isn't going to make much difference if I use liquid milk vs dry milk & water ? We only use non-fat milk, and I can only find non-fat dry milk powder. My average palate will not notice, will yours?

karol's picture
karol

What is the difference between the two, I have the Carnation and wonder if I need the special one? I want better soft bread.