My grandmother's bread recipe always came out dense and heavy, but I swore by it for years

Last Tuesday I forgot to add the salt and the loaf rose perfectly for the first time. A baker at the farmer's market in Des Moines told me salt kills yeast activity, so now I cut the amount by half and my bread finally has that airy crumb I was chasing. Has anyone else tweaked a family staple and found a better version?

2 comments

2 Comments

spencer_chen68d ago

Hold on, is forgetting salt really that big a deal? In my experience, a lot of family recipes have a ton of variables that go wrong long before the salt gets blamed. Maybe your grandma's dough was just too wet or you were kneading it to death. Your mileage may vary, but cutting a key ingredient in half sounds like a good way to end up with bland bread. Take this with a grain of salt, but I'd mess with temperature and proofing time before I'd start rewriting a recipe that's been working for decades.

evan_jenkins8d ago

Nah man, people act like salt is the secret glue holding the universe together. Its not that deep lol. Even if you forget, bread is still gonna be bread just a little flat tasting.