Powdered milk in bread recipe

Question

I have a book with several bread recipes that call for 1-2 tablespoons of powdered milk. This isn't something I usually use and I was thinking substituting it with normal milk, and putting less water to compensate for the added liquid. Would this be ok? And if yes, how much milk should I put for one tablespoon of powdered milk?

Answer 1

A general reconstitution of milk with dried powder is 1/4 dry milk and 1 cup water to reconstitute milk. So 2 tablespoons is 1/8 cup to 1/2 cup of water.

If you want to replace 2 tablespoons, replace 1/2 cup water with milk. 1 Tablespoon is 1/4 cup milk instead of water.

I have done this as a replacement for dried milk in bread many times with success.

Answer 2

Yes, you can. I use the King Arthur Flour Small Pain de Mie recipe all the time http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/a-smaller-pain-de-mie-recipe, which calls for non-fat powdered milk. An answer to another question here Why is milk powder used in bread machine recipes? says to scald the milk, a concept reiterated by the folks at King Arthur. So as an experiment, I made two loaves of bread, identical in every way except that in one I substituted 170 ml scalded skim milk for the powdered milk and that volume of water.

Right out of the oven and three days later, I can find no difference between the two loaves of bread.

My package of powdered milk calls for 7 ounces of water to 1/3 cup powder to make 1 cup of milk, so I figured 8 tsp powder + 7 Tbs water = 1/2 cup milk. I converted to metric just to make the math easier, but it doesn't seem to me to require that much precision.

Answer 3

One thing to add to the answers mentioned before: if you leave the ingredients in a bread machine overnight, then powdered milk is better as it doesn't go sour.

Answer 4

Yes, you can substitute as already answered, but you can also just leave it out! I've found it makes no noticeable difference.

Answer 5

Just leave it out - least in those quantities. We make bread in a bread maker with and without it, and anecdotally adding it tends to make for softer, less chewy bread, especially if its a recipe with some sort of fat in it.