September 5, 2018 - 12:23pm
Using / adding milk powder in recipe
Hi, i have a simple question (or not) about adding milk powder in recipe. So i have a good bread recipe (sweet bread) and been using it since forever, and it yields good everytime. The problem rises when I want to add milk (in the form of milk powder, not liquid) into the recipe to add more flavor. If i want to ADD 10% of milk powder, lets say adding 100 gram of milk powder in 1 kg flour recipe, should i add a certain percentage of water too? Or should i just use the same amount of water i used before, without adding a single drop? Are those 10% added milk powder significant enough to 'stole' the water used to hydrate the flour, causing less hydration to the flour itself?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
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The milk fats in your milk powder are going to contribute more in dough softening than the hydration it is going to take away.
Whisk your milk powder into the water before adding it to the other ingredients.
Milk powder for baking is non-fat.
I have always used full fat milk and milk powder in my breads.
Even if the fat content is low(or neglible), other milk solids still interfere with gluten formation and give a slacker dough.
This is the kind of dry milk normally recommended for baking:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/bakers-special-dry-milk-16-oz
It's treated at a high temperature so that it destroys an enzyme that milk possesses that weakens gluten. Your bread rises a little bit higher if you use this compared with regular dry milk. (This is why liquid milk should be scalded before using for optimal performance.)
Yes, scalding or using powdered milk will denature the protease enzymes in the milk that would otherwise break apart the glutens disulfide bonds.
Depending on what you are making, this could be a good or bad thing.
The powdering or scalding heat treatment also decrease and denatures lipase, an enzyme which increases softness by breaking down lipids thus increasing the emulsification of fats.
Powdered milk that you buy at the store does not have this property...you need "high heat" powdered milk, which is harder to find.
I am from New Zealand, I think we are fairly famous for our milk.
Here, we call it UHT - Ultra High Temperature treated milk.
The milk goes through an evaporating process where it is exposed to extremely high temperatures, it is then either mixed back with water and packaged as UHT milk or spray dried further into powdered milk.
Through this process, all of these products will have extremely low enzyme activity.
This is how what we have is made, I am no milk expert and I am unsure if that is the same process as elsewhere.
For the record, I'm using full cream milk powder with 26% fat content (and coincidence or not, it's produced in new Zealand). I also have another product with 50% fat content, i think it is manufactured powder from whey which is infused with vegetable and other oil, thus the high fat content.
If i may, i want to ask another question. In room temperature, which bread have be the longest shelf life, the one made with milk in it, or the one made without milk?
Probably not coincidence, we export more than 1.5 million tonnes of the stuff.
As to your questions:
Your milk bread will have a much softer crumb.
With the full fat milk it will also stay softer longer(stale slower)as the milk fat coats amylopectin and slows down the crystalization process.
However, retaining this extra moisture, as well as extra fats will mean it is more prone to mould growth.
is what we call here in the U.S. Super creamy and delicious, and my favorite brand is 50% higher in protein content than regular milk.
Hi, NZB,
Which brand of full-fat milk from NZ would you recommend? Up until today, I've only bought skim milk powder. I'm going to look for the full-fat ones. Thank you.
Yippee
Pretty sure that Ultra Filtered Milk is a totally different product. The high heat product isn't intended for drinking and doesn't reconstitute well to produce milk.
You are correct that this is a completely different process for fresh mill.
This is an interesting topic. The process separates the milk solids from the permeate. The milk manufactures then use some of the milk solids for separate dairy products and produce milk with what remains.
This means the finished product contains more permeates than the raw milk. The processors will try to tell you it is done to standardize their product(for consistent taste, protein content etc) but really it it a cash grab, watering down milk with dairy by products to whatever the legal minimum definition of milk is.
Fresh milk without this will be advertised as "permeate free ". Without this standardizing, the protein levels will fluctuate with seasons(what the cows are eating), as will the taste. The milk will be consistently higher in protein content, which contributes a lot to the creamy taste.
As for UHT powdered milk, it is commonly remixed with water for drinking. With what we export, a large portion goes to tropical island nations for general consumption(as people don't have fridges). I almost lived on the stuff when I was living in Fiji. It is quite different taste from fresh milk, very caramel tasting from the Mailard reaction during the UHT treatment.
Perhaps this is different to the UHT you have(or someone has done a brilliant marketing job).
To Yippee - I am unsure what brands we send your way. Alpine and Anchor are good products if you have them. Anything produced by Fonterra will be consistent in quality.
more water.
"If i want to ADD 10% of milk powder, lets say adding 100 gram of milk powder in 1 kg flour recipe, should i add a certain percentage of water too? Or should i just use the same amount of water i used before, without adding a single drop? Are those 10% added milk powder significant enough to 'stole' the water used to hydrate the flour, causing less hydration to the flour itself?"
You will be "stealing" at least 10g away from the water weight.
If goes along the same lines if you were to substitute milk for a recipe with water, you would have to add 10% more water. There are 5g water to a teaspoon. So two teaspoons of water. Significant? Depends.
There is something else going on... 100g milk powder plus 900g water would make 1000g of milk, but if the recipe called for 1000g flour that would be 100% hydration. So the milk you are theoretically making will have more milk solids in it than normal milk, up to twice as much if dough hydration is 50%. That has to mean you will need more than 10% additional water in the recipe if the recipe has less than 100% hydration. :) You may want to reevaluate the amount of milk powder you want to use. Many recipes ask for half milk/ half water.
Oh, I think one can adjust the hydration another way. Add the milk powder weight to the total flour weight, calculate and correct the water weight for proper hydration.
Edit: You may have to separate the fat content to calculate. Fat is not included in my calculations.
Excuse me if my reasoning here is wrong.
Are you saying you believe milk powder takes 10% of its weight in water to hydrate?
If so, then along the reasoning of 100% hydration 1kg flour, with 100g(10%) milk powder(not included in flour weight) 1kg water. Would it not be 10% of 10% = 1% water added(an ignorable amount)by Baker's flour %?
I think they were meaning that they would add milk powder to their recipe, not premix the powder into an added milk weight/volume like a recipe may call for like you mentioned, but you raise a valid point.
I don't think I can drink enough coffee to figure this out but if added to the flour weight, the added water would come out less. I was thinking that the added milk sugar may act more like a fluid but didn't bother to take that into account. We are talking about roughly a tablespoon of added water.
I think the easy answer to the posted main question would be, have a little water ready to add if you think the dough needs it to come together. For a home batch, fine, but if talking about 20 k of dough...?
I did get a hold of a bag of yellow in colour high fat milk in Laos. I tried combining with tepid water for cream and got...yuck, lumpy weird stuff. Even when left overnight in the fridge. Not fit for my morning coffee. I did add a few heaping tablespoons full to half a kilo flour for sweet bread softness and I think it was basically used for butter like cake creams. Didn't investigate. Kept it in the freezer.
Hmmm, yellow milk powder...Doesn't sound overly appetizing.
I bake with 200kg + batches of dough, my recipes change by 1% or more water every few days depending on the flour we have received.
In terms of a recipe, I would still call these ignorable amounts as they constantly vary and it is the sort of thing you are unsure of until you start doughing. But as you say, have water nearby for once the dough starts coming together.
It's worth saying, when I have added milk powder I have never added extra water to compensate for hydrating the powder itself. In my opinion, for dough handling, the milk solids are going to have more of an effect than the possibility of 1% lower hydration.