a baking question

[ratcreature]

When I make Hefezopf (yeast plait? basically a braided, slightly sweet yeast bread with eggs, butter and milk) it turns out fairly tasty, but the dough texture is just not as nice as that of the bought kind. Mine is soft and overall decently fluffy, i.e. the dough rises more or less to the volume it should, but the holes are smaller and more uniform than the ideal, also the texture isn't quite right. It's hard to explain, but what I expect is that for example if I tore it, it ought to tear a bit in chewier strands rather than just crumbs, which I assume is a side effect of mine just having a small-hole texture?

I'm not sure what I need to do to correct the dough texture. The recipe I use is to mix 500g white flour with dry yeast, two tablespoons of sugar and a pinch of salt, then warm 250ml of milk, melt the butter (about 70g) in it, so both are lukewarm, mix that and two eggs (also taken out of the fridge for a little while) under the dry ingredients until a ball forms, then add maybe either a little flour or a little milk until the dough is fairly soft, but not sticky. Then I let it rise until the volume doubled, then I braid the dough and let it rise again for a short time in braid form (maybe 15 minutes or so), and then bake it with medium heat (about 175°C) for about 40 minutes. So, experienced bakers and food chemists, what do I need to do differently to make the dough texture more like it should be for this type of sweet bread?

Comments

[teneagles.livejournal.com]

Hm. I don't use dry yeast, so I can't speak to that, but adding the butter after giving the yeast a chance to get going is important, imo. The softened vs melted butter business is also very important (again, imo.)

For the second knead, I'm talking about a short knead, where you go at it relatively gently for 5 minutes, with the first knead not being a super-extended affair either. The other way to do it, as you say, is to knead it only once, for a good ten minutes at the beginning. I have no scientific reasoning; my grandmother always let it rise twice, so I do too, and it always turns out just how I like it (imagine that!)

[ratcreature]

I will experiment and try the suggestions next time! At least results of the less than perfect food chemistry are still quite edible.