How to Convert a Loaf Recipe Into Muffins (and Vice Versa) (2024)

FAQs

What happens if I use bread flour for muffins? ›

1 cup All-Purpose Flour = 1 cup Bread Flour

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.

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.

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.

Ideal Muffin Cooking Temperature

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.

If you over mix muffin batter then you will likely end up with dense rubbery muffins. When baking muffins you want to mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients and stir only until they are just combined. This step should literally take a few seconds. A thick and lumpy muffin batter is good.

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!

Muffins have more or less all ingredients used in cakes but the proportion is different. There is more flour, more liquid, less sugar and fat in muffin batter. Most cakes need two or more eggs while muffins use only one. Baking powder is used for batter rise but yeast is never used in muffins.

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 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.

What happens if you add an extra egg to muffin mix? ›

Eggs are responsible for giving baked goods structure, which means the amount you use directly affects the resulting texture. Using too few eggs will make your desserts dense, but using too many will make them rubbery.

Start the oven on high

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.

Start with room-temperature ingredients.

Having eggs, butter, and milk at room temperature helps them form a smooth mixture that traps air and expands when heated in the oven. That expansion makes your muffins fluffy and light. Room-temperature butter should indent easily when you press it.

Rest the Muffin Batter

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.

When NOT to Substitute Bread Flour: Bread flour should never be used in place of all purpose flour in tender baked goods, such as cakes, pancakes, waffles, quick breads and muffins, or brownies. Low gluten development is preferable for baked goods in these categories.

Bread flour is a hard wheat flour with about 12 percent protein. Bread flour is used for yeast raised bread because the dough it produces has more gluten than dough made with other flours. Sufficient gluten produces a light loaf with good volume. Slices hold together, rather than crumble.

Bread Flour – This is used because it has a bit more protein than all-purpose flour and helps to keep the cupcakes stable enough for the ganache filling. I always use bread flour (even if I omit the ganache filling, which I do at times), but some readers have reported success using all-purpose flour, as well.

Cake flour is a low protein/gluten product. It is very fine and powdery. There's very little gluten in it. This is what you want for a cake as the gluten quantity you'll find in a bread flour is way too high to get the fine little bubbles you need in a cake batter.