I have an acquired dairy allergy and many of the bread recipes I have include dairy. Finding a substitute for butter has been easy but I’m uncertain about milk so I have really limited myself to basic french bread since being diagnosed. If all the recipe needs is liquid , then any of the milk substitutes will work but I feel like milk does more for a recipe than simply add liquid. I don’t know the science of this but it seems that the milk fat and milk proteins affect the crumb.
Does anyone have suggestions or insights about baking dairy-free? I’d like to be able to make sandwich bread and rolls…
You might find this link interesting: https://www.chainbaker.com/milk-effects/
I would use water, make a yudane, add sugar, egg & fat. That would result in a very nice sandwich loaf without milk.
Thanks. I’ve never made a yudane but I will look it up
Yudane is a flour and boiled water paste. A ratio of 1 flour:2 water is good. Yudane can be any portion of the flour & water in a recipe, up to about 20%. So, if the dough calls for 400g flour, use 80g in the yudane and 320g in main dough. 160g boiling water--deduct that water from the main recipe, depending on the hydration rate you're using. Yudane makes the bread softer and keeps it fresh longer. If you put it in the fridge overnight, it also adds some flavour to the bread.
You can certainly make good loaf breads without milk, but of course it depends on what you think a sandwich bread "should" be like. You could add some mashed potatoes, which would do some of the same things that a yudane would do. Enriching with sugar, eggs, and possibly some oil, as Moe wrote, is going to give you a good bread with nice taste and texture. Of course it will be a little different than if it had butter or milk but it will still be very fine.
TomP
Bob's Red Mill Potato Flakes make an easy substitute for yudane.
For dairy free - just make bread as it says here (in the forum that is). No dairy needed. Enjoy!
Here's a no-dairy thought: I made pan de cristal burger buns for a family cookout -- I simply followed the King Arthur recipe but divided the dough into appropriately-sized rounds -- and everyone loved them.
I think of pan de cristal as the antithesis of Parker House dinner rolls ... superb in its pillowy lightness & crunch. I guess I'm a pan-stan.🤣
Rob