Kefir Bread Recipe (No Yeast, No Kneading) (2024)

FAQs

Can you knead dough without yeast? ›

If you love making baked goods but don't have the time to let dough rise, make dough without yeast. You can easily make fluffy, flavorful dough that relies on chemical reactions between baking soda, baking powder, or vinegar.

By adding an acid to baking soda (such as lemon juice or cream of tartar) a chemical reaction occurs that produces carbon dioxide and fills your bread with air — much like yeast does. You can substitute yeast with equal parts lemon juice and baking soda.

To ferment bread without yeast, you will need flour, water, and a natural sourdough starter. The sourdough starter is a mixture of flour and water that has been fermented with wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria.

Why is my bread dense: Usually bread will be too dense when there is too much flour. Keep in mind this dough will be pretty sticky, do not add more flour than specified. Other factors that come into play are humidity and age of flour. Little yeast, long rise, sticky dough are keys to a good, light loaf.

A failure to knead dough (unless you're working with a no-knead recipe) can lead to: Poor gluten development: When you don't knead bread, the gluten won't form properly. This can result in a lack of elasticity and strength, meaning your final product is likely to come out of the oven dense and heavy.

A dough needs to be kneaded before any fermentation. Kneading (or a long period of time) develops a gluten network in the dough to trap CO2 gasses from the yeast. This inflates the dough during fermentation which we call the rise.

Unleavened bread is any of a wide variety of breads which are prepared without using rising agents such as yeast or sodium bicarbonate. The preparation of bread-like non-leavened cooked grain foods appeared in prehistoric times.

Some differences could be that your bread will not rise as tall as you're used to, the flavor is a little different, or the texture may not be exactly the same. However, if you're out of yeast or don't have the time to wait for your bread to rise, these substitutes will undoubtedly get the job done.

The most common source of leavening in antiquity was to retain a piece of dough from the previous day to utilize as a form of sourdough starter. Pliny the Elder reported that the Gauls and Iberians used the foam skimmed from beer to produce "a lighter kind of bread than other peoples".

How do you start fermentation without yeast? ›

There are several methods for fermenting without yeast, including lacto-fermentation, which involves using the natural bacteria present on vegetables to create an acidic environment that preserves the food.

You just need flour and water. To see the miracle of fermentation in action, mix equal parts flour and water — start with a cup of each — in a large bowl, and cover it. Leave it alone in a warm place, and over the course of 24 hours you'll start to see bubbles in the mixture, like the bubbles in pancake batter.

Perfectly proofed no-knead bread dough will have a bubbly top that is flat or slightly domed and stretches across the mouth of the bowl. If your dough has overproofed, it will have sunken in slightly. Slightly overproofed dough can still be shaped and baked. It will just produce a flatter loaf.

Add Milk

To make your bread soft and fluffy, another trick used by commercial bakers is replacing water with milk. Milk has fats which make bread softer.

Editor: Shani, it sounds that your yeast may be too old and expired, or perhaps you're not letting the dough rest adequately after shaping and before baking.

Dough kneading serves a fundamental purpose in bread making. It speeds up the formation and orients properly the tight and elastic gluten structure that occurs when gliadin and glutenin proteins in the flour bind each other in the presence of water.

With just flour, water, oil, and salt, you can create a delightful, no-yeast flatbread that's quick to prepare. What is this? While many may associate flour and water solely with making pasta like cavatelli, these simple ingredients are also perfect for homemade flatbreads.

How to Proof Yeast. Proofing (or fermentation) occurs after the gluten has been developed through kneading. The yeast will get to work — feeding off the sugars in the starchy flour and expelling gas into the web of gluten. In most recipes, you will want the dough to rise until it doubles in size before shaping.

If you want to avoid store-bought yeast in your pizza dough, baking powder is a quick-fix alternative.