A basic muffin recipe and a quick bread recipe are usually interchangeable as far as the ingredients go. When converting from one to another, the main variables that require a little tweaking are cooking time and temperature. This means that you can covert a favorite quick bread recipe to muffins that will bake in a fraction of the time. Or your treasured muffin recipe can become a loaf with just a couple of minor tweaks.
The Best Muffin Pans for Morning Treats and Dessert Sweets
Converting a Loaf Recipe Into Muffins
Converting a quick bread like banana bread from a loaf into muffins requires a couple of major tweaks: a higher oven temperature and a much shorter cook time.
If you take a quick look at a few muffin recipes, you'll notice most recipes cook at temperatures between 375 F and 425 F. If your quick bread recipe bakes at 350 F for 60 minutes, try baking at 375 F for 30 minutes or even 400 F for 20 minutes. Since you don't have an exact cook time, use the toothpick test starting at 15 minutes and keep a close eye on the muffins. Once the muffins start looking golden brown on top, you should definitely check them with a toothpick. If they aren't quite done, test them again every 5 minutes until the toothpick comes out clean and then remove them from the oven to cool.
The same adjustments (but opposite) will need to be made if you're converting a muffin recipe to a loaf. Muffins take a lot less time to cook and can handle higher temperatures without getting dried out.
Check the temperature of your muffin recipe. If it calls for 375 F, you will want to lower the heat to 350 F. If it calls for 400 F, try lowering it to 375 F.
The cook time will likely double or more, with a standard size loaf pan of quick bread taking at least 45 minutes to cook. The cook time will depend on factors like whether the batter includes wet ingredients like blueberries, how accurate your oven temperature is, and the type of pan you're using. The key here is to test for doneness by inserting a toothpick into the center of the loaf. When it comes out with no wet batter attached, it is done.
Compared to yeast bread, quick bread is really quick. That is because quick breads are made with baking powder and/or baking soda, fast-acting chemical leavening agents that produce carbonated gas when combined with liquid, causing the batter to bubble up and rise. Once you combine the liquid and dry ingredients, you want to get the batter into the pan and in the oven relatively fast, or else the gas will expend itself before the heat of the oven has a chance to set the glutens in the flour.
A loaf is a far less "quick" form of quick bread because loaves take longer to bake. On the other hand, filling 12 muffin cups is considerably more tedious than simply pouring all the batter into a single pan.
Fast and Easy Quick Bread Recipes
Don't Rush
Although it sounds like you need to worry about rushing, think about pancake batter for a minute. The secret to making pancakes (a runnier quick bread) is letting the batter rest for 15 to 20 minutes before cooking. That's because you do not want to mix the batter until every last lump is gone because doing so will overwork the glutens and make your pancakes rubbery. Resting the batter allows the lumps of dry flour to dissolve on their own.
Overmixing is also the bane of muffins and quick bread. And when you consider that spooning batter into muffin cups requires dragging a spoon through the batter, which is no different than stirring it, you can understand why it is so important to use the fewest possible strokes when you mix the ingredients.
What about losing the expendable gases as time drags on? Store-bought baking powder is almost always "double acting," which means that it releases an initial burst of gas when it is combined with liquid and then a second burst that is triggered by heat. So, while it is true that a certain amount of carbonated gas will be expended when the wet and dry ingredients come together, resting the batter does not affect the second burst of gas that happens in the oven.
Filling Your Pans
There is a fine art to filling muffin and loaf pans. The key: Grease the pan well and fill the muffin cup or loaf pan about 3/4 of the way full. Don't overfill, since it will take your treats too long to bake and some batter might spill over the edge, making a mess in your oven. Save yourself some time and elbow grease by using paper muffin liners. You can also line your loaf pan with parchment paper for easy removal.
Helpful Links
Easy Quick Bread Recipes for Breakfast and Beyond
How to Remove Baked Goods From Pans
Doneness Tests: How to Tell if Your Baked Goods Are Done
Although muffins are considered to be bread, they fall under the quick bread category and utilize baking soda as a leavening agent rather than yeast. The term muffin typically refers to an individual sized quick bread, and can be sweet or savory.
But muffins, cookies, and pie crusts made with Bread Flour will be a little tougher and chewier. To help with the texture differences, make sure to mix your dough as little as possible, since mixing develops gluten and makes baked goods tough.
The purpose of this method is to limit the amount of gluten production during the mixing process, keeping quick breads light and tender. To achieve this, the dry ingredients are combined in one bowl, the wet ingredients are combined in a separate bowl, and then the two mixtures are combined together.
That being said, the standard oven temperature for baking desserts like quick breads and muffins is commonly set to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Setting your oven to this temperature will almost always produce a well-cooked muffin recipe.
The best bakery-style crumb muffins start with cake flour
Cake flour is more finely ground and has less protein, which leaves the muffins with a fine, light crumb and soft texture. Using cake flour is an easy way to avoid heavy, dense muffins even if you end up stirring just a bit too much. What is this?
The fluffy batter is what gives cupcakes their soft, spongy texture. Muffins, on the other hand, are moist and dense. Another important difference between a cupcake and a muffin is that cupcakes tend to have more sugar and so they're a lot sweeter than muffins.
You can use either all-purpose flour or pastry flour; all-purpose flour gives you a sturdier muffin while a pastry flour muffin will be lighter and more delicate. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, vanilla, vegetable oil or butter, and eggs. Make sure to blend them thoroughly!
Bread flour produces baked goods with more structure and chew than all-purpose flour, as all-purpose only has a protein content of 10 to 12 percent, versus the 12 to 14 percent of bread. All-purpose flour produces tender baked goods (as opposed to chewy ones) and is ideal for cakes, muffins, biscuits, piecrust, etc.
Bake your muffins at 400°F for the first 5 minutes, then drop the temperature to the more standard 350°F for the remainder of the bake time. This method sparks the leavening agents (especially baking powder) in the batter to react quicker, creating that gorgeously risen top.
In a muffin mix that calls for water, can I substitute milk? A. We don't recommend using milk instead of water because the milk can make holes in the paper liners or the sides of the muffins.
The first, most hands-off way to make your muffins pop (literally) is to let the batter rest. Make the batter, cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and let the batter rest at room temperature for about 1 hour. If you're short on time, just 30 minutes can make a difference.
Fill muffin cases two-thirds full and bake for 20-25 mins, until risen, firm to the touch and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. If the trays will not fit on 1 shelf, swap the shelves around after 15 mins of cooking.
Is an English muffin better for you than bread? A. English muffins are slightly healthier than bread because they include fewer calories, carbohydrates, fats, and sugar than bread. However, both have a high carbohydrate content, which can offer energy throughout the day, and many nutrients.
English muffins tend to be a little healthier than bread since English muffins have less carbohydrates, fats, and sugar than bread. While bread does contain slightly more fat when compared to English muffins, both options have 1 gram or less of total fat.
The difference between cake and bread is that a cake is sweeter, more delicious, and contains much more calories than bread. Cakes are leavened using baking soda while the bread is leavened using yeast. Cakes are prepared using a lot of ingredients to make them tastier while the bread is prepared chiefly with flour.
A lot of commercial brand muffins are just as bad as cake, donuts, or cookies. They can have upwards of 500 calories each, 40 grams of sugar, hardly any fiber, and 35% DRV of fat. Even if they say they contain fruit, the added fats and sugars will nullify any benefits the fruit contains.
Introduction: My name is Domingo Moore, I am a attractive, gorgeous, funny, jolly, spotless, nice, fantastic person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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