Adding Malt Extract in Your Bread

I am sure most of you would love waking up to the yummy smell of freshly baked bread wafting through the air in your house. I enjoy the taste of freshly baked bread any time of the day. Apart from the regular ingredients like, flour, salt, butter/ oil, eggs or yeast have you ever wondered what else is added to it to give it the required crusty feel, the texture, taste and colour to the bread loaves?

On an average, adding malt extract to the bread in place of sugar eggs on the yeast activity. Other than the sweet flavour that it imparts to the bread, it also gives a lovely golden brown crust for the loaf, once baked. You can source the required quantity of malt extract from the local malt extract suppliers.

Now, colour of the loaf would depend upon the ground malt extract that are used in the form of flour and how much it has been roasted. To get the brown colour you would have to roast the malt extract flour more or the result would be pale colour flour, which may not impart the required colour to your loaf of bread. Darker brown malt extract flour often result from well roasted flour, thus giving the bread loaf the golden brown coloured crust, thus appealing to the taste and palette of the customers. However, the drawback would be the lost enzyme activity of well roasted extract.

At the same time, you are also required to know that the colour, flavour, stickiness of the bread loaf varies with the quantity of malt extract that you use for baking. There are also some online stores or suppliers, from where you can source it if not for the local suppliers. If you use more quantity, then you would get the distinctive colour and flavour.

Looking for convenience and based on the usage, one can opt to get the malt in the dry form or liquid form from the malt extract suppliers. Dry malt extract is also known to give the bread loaf the active enzymes that it seeks. Malt liquid, in the meanwhile even if it lacks the yeast is known to ferment in room temperature and should be stored in a refrigerator so that it would last longer.

It is not just the colour, but malt can also be used to enhance the flavour of the bread loaf. If not in the extract format, you can see that some bakeries or bakers use malt in the powder format for their baking. Malt as you can see comes in various formats such as extract, liquid, light malt powder, dark malt powder etc.

Malt powder especially is the secret ingredient that gives the colour and flavour for dark rye breads, specifically for ones with whole kernels. Based on the form of malt that you are using the quantity will vary for recipes, as the flavour or sweetness for malt syrup is more than for malt powder.