whitelegg1
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Wholemeal breadmaking questionQuick question,
On our breadmaker, it says in the recipe for wholemeal bread to add a vitamin C tablet. What? Why?
Is this neccessary?
If so what on earth do they mean?
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Northern_Lad
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Re: Wholemeal breadmaking question | whitelegg1 wrote: | | Quick question, |
OK.
| whitelegg1 wrote: | | On our breadmaker, it says in the recipe for wholemeal bread to add a vitamin C tablet. What? Why? |
Erm. Don't know.
| whitelegg1 wrote: | | Is this neccessary? |
No.
| whitelegg1 wrote: | | If so what on earth do they mean? |
They're not, so don't worry.
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whitelegg1
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Thanks,
Means we can do wholemeal for daughters packed lunch.
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judith
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I think Vitamin C is what they call a "flour improver" - it helps get the most out of the gluten in the flour. The loaf will possibly be slighly denser if you don't add the tablet. For me that isn't a problem as long as we aren't talking house bricks 
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ross
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In my breadmaker, if I don't add at least 1/3 white flour to wholemeal, it comes out as a brick. If I add some vitamin c powder, it comes out fine. Took ages to find flavourless Vitamin C powder, got it from Holland & Barretts in the end.
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mochyn
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I'm with Ross on this one: a little Vit C powder added with the flour makes a reliable loaf: without, I find bread actually baked in the machine often sinks in the middle, but with the Vit C it never does.
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Northern_Lad
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You both have me at a disadvantage there, as I don't use a bread-maker.
I'll back away, bowing in reverence to greated knowledge.
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cab
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Vit. C (ascorbic acid) does lots of things. It makes the bread dough more acid, and that's a good thing fir getting yeast to get going fast in a bread machine, and it also means that the bread will have a slightly longer self life (never an issue in our house).
It's also meant to somehow help get the most out of the gluten in flour, so it acts to stabilise the raised dough. The chemistry of that is something I'm a bit hazy on; ascorbic acid is a free radica quencher, and it's good at sopping up oxygen, so perhaps it prevents the gluten from oxidising?
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Northern_Lad
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Given what you said about it speeding up fermentation, Cab, I think that's what it's being used for in this respect.
Wholemeal flour does take long to proove than white.
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cab
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| Northern_Lad wrote: | Given what you said about it speeding up fermentation, Cab, I think that's what it's being used for in this respect.
Wholemeal flour does take long to proove than white. |
It's also got a sharper quality to it too; wholemean bread has more of a chance of falling in during baking, which is meant to be due to the chaffy bits being sharp, severing the gluten fibers. Dunno how true that is, but I've seen some spectacular wholemeal collapses 
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mochyn
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Spectacular collapses? Dont' talk to me about spectacular collapses: trying to get a good-lookin loaf for a local show this summer I almost filled the freezer with collapsed wholemeal! When I finally put a bit of Vt C in, the morning of the show, the b****y thing stuck to the lid of the machine! Hence, no entry in the 'Wholemeal loaf in a bread maker' class...[/quote]
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