If you are wondering why your bread is crumby or too dry, it could be due to one of the following reasons:
- All Purpose Flour versus Bread Flour – Homemade bread will crumble more easily if you make your bread from all purpose flour (instead of bread flour). Bread flour provides better structural strength to bread (because bread flour has more protein and forms a stronger gluten network). In addition, some flours such as whole wheat flour and rye flour have less gluten strength and are poorer at holding moisture. Breads made with these flours (unless offset with other ingredients) can be drier and more crumbly.
- Lean versus Enriched Breads – Lean breads dry out faster and crumble more easily than breads “enriched” with butter or oil. Butter and oil help to retain moisture in bread. The fats in these ingredients coat the gluten strands and keep the bread soft and less crumbly.
- Sugar & Moisture – Low sugar breads dry out faster and thus often crumble more easily than sweeter breads. Sugar is hygroscopic which means that it helps to retain moisture.
- Salt – If you reduce the salt in a bread (beyond what is called for in a recipe), your bread can come out more dry and crumbly. Salt helps to strengthen the gluten network in bread.
- Too Heavy with Extras – If you overload a bread with non-binding ingredients (such as seeds or multigrain), you can weaken the structural strength of the loaf and make it more crumbly.
- Dough Moistness – A dough that is too dry can cause a finished bread to be crumbly and dry. For example, if you use heavily compacted flour (or make an ingredient measurement error), you can accidentally add too much flour to a recipe. This will throw off the liquid-to-dry ingredient ratio of a recipe. If the dough is looking too dry in your bread machine (after about 5 to 6 minutes of mixing), you can add some water/milk (a little at a time… so you don’t add too much) until the dough reaches the right consistency.
- Over Baking – If you overbake your bread, it will cause the bread to lose excess moisture and the loaf will turn out dry & crumbly. This can be due to leaving the dough in your oven too long, the internal temp of your oven being higher than the set dial temp, using the dark crust setting on your bread machine (instead of the light or medium crust setting), etc. FYI – If I am making a bread in my oven, I like to test whether it is under or over baked with a digital bread thermometer. For most breads, they are fully baked when the interior temperature reaches 190 to 200 degrees F.
- Slicing Before Cooled – If you slice bread before it completely cools, you will allow moisture (steam) to escape from the bread. This causes the bread to dry out too quickly.
- Storage – This answer sort of depends on the type of bread that you make (as some types of storage work better with certain types of bread). However, in general, if you leave bread out overnight unprotected or store it in a porous paper bag, it will dry out faster than when stored in a plastic bag or airtight container.
Related Sections
- Bread Machine Recipes – This Bread Dad section covers bread machine recipes such as banana bread, French bread, super soft white bread, sourdough bread, gluten free bread and many more.
Reference Sources