My levain didn’t grow as much today as expected. I’m assuming it wasn’t warm enough. This is delaying tonight’s bake. My mise en place is prepared. My Tangzhong is cooling. I’m starting in 20 minutes, ready or not.

If my levain isn’t quite ready, that just means the ferment will take a bit longer. #MySourdoughJourney #sourdoughlife #sourdough #tangzhong #FDT

So I'm reading about a method used to make softer and longer lasting homemade bread, from Japan, calld tangzhong.

And it involves taking a little liquid and flour from the bread recipe, and boiling it into gel, and mixing that back in. Apparently the gelatinized starch helps the bread absorb and keep more water.

Which sounds really labor intensive, dirtying at least an extra pan, but it also reminds me of adding cornstarch to a stirfry as well as "modified food starch" in ingredients lists, so I went down an internet rabbithole...

When starches are gelatinized, they form what are called dextrins, and you can actually buy them in dry powder form, as a fiber supplement. Specifically, Benefiber's single ingredient is wheat dextrin.

So now what I'm wondering is, can you just add a teaspoon of Benefiber to a breadmaker recipe and get the same effect?

#dextrin #bread #tangzhong