How to make restaurant-style bread!

[phan1]

Cheesecake Factory, Texas Roadhouse, Pappa's Seafood, Pappadeaux's. These places all have amazing bread! It's so soft, yeasty, and fluffy, and you can't get them anywhere else! Even your local bakeries or your Whole Foods and Central Market bakeries can't make bread like that. All the breads in the markets and even recipes in books are for rustic-style bread. But I want soft and fluffy bread like in the restaurants! I was wondering how I could replicate any of these at home. To be honest, I highly doubt any of these restaurants have enough room to make the bread from scratch, they probably get them frozen for all I know. I really don't care how they do it; it's so good and I want to learn how to make them from scratch. I know there are some recipes floating around for these breads, but I really don't think any of them are the real deal.

But I've been researching and it seems to get soft yeasty bread requires more than the standard ingredients of yeast, flour, eggs, and butter. I've seen online that they use "dough conditioners" and "Vital Wheat Gluten" to achieve that softness. Anyone know about this stuff? Is it unhealthy? I'll gladly put gallons of butter if that's what the recipe calls for, but I don't want to be messing with anything un-natural like trans-fats.

Edited January 28, 2009 by phan1 (log)

[abooja]

Your local supermarket should carry bread of this variety.

[Fat Guy]

Most of those restaurants, as I understand it, are baking their bread on premises from frozen dough or from a mix. The bread is essentially a big version of a Parker House roll, which in addition to flour, water, yeast and salt contains eggs, butter, milk and sugar. You can also buy Parker House rolls in the supermarket but they won't be as good as the bread at those chain restaurants because that type of bread is particularly desirable when baked to order and degrades rapidly thereafter.

[HungryC]

Soft, fluffy white bread is an easy and forgiving bread to make. You can make wholesome, nutritious white bread that ISN'T filled with dough conditioners, chemical leaveners, or other junk....good, homemade soft white bread is a wonderful American tradition, perfect for grilled cheese, sandwiches, dipping into gravy, etc. To tenderize bread, ingredients like honey/sugar, dry milk solids, and potato starch are used by home bakers. Google potato bread recipes for a good, soft loaf....or check out the King Arthur flour website for a wealth of bread recipes.

In case you're referring to dark, soft, dinner rolls try this King Arthur flour clone of chain-restaurant dark dinner rolls. It's a simple part whole wheat bread enriched with honey, and is is pretty dead-on for the bread at Outback, etc.

[djyee100]

My parents liked to make soft, fluffy white rolls from Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix. The mix is very easy to use. My first baking experiences, age 11, were with the Hot Roll Mix. My parents particularly liked to use this mix to make Chinese roast pork buns (cha siu bao). good luck!

[MikeJ]

  djyee100 said:

My parents liked to make soft, fluffy white rolls from Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix. The mix is very easy to use. My first baking experiences, age 11, were with the Hot Roll Mix. My parents particularly liked to use this mix to make Chinese roast pork buns (cha siu bao). good luck!

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Just curious - did they steam those, or bake them?

[djyee100]

  MikeJ said:

  djyee100 said:

My parents liked to make soft, fluffy white rolls from Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix. The mix is very easy to use. My first baking experiences, age 11, were with the Hot Roll Mix. My parents particularly liked to use this mix to make Chinese roast pork buns (cha siu bao). good luck!

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Just curious - did they steam those, or bake them?

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Both, but usually steamed. Before baking you can put a light sugar wash (a little sugar dissolved in water) on the buns to make the rolls shiny.

Edited January 28, 2009 by djyee100 (log)

[highchef]

  HungryC said:

Soft, fluffy white bread is an easy and forgiving bread to make.  You can make wholesome, nutritious white bread that ISN'T filled with dough conditioners, chemical leaveners, or other junk....good, homemade soft white bread is a wonderful American tradition, perfect for grilled cheese, sandwiches, dipping into gravy, etc.  To tenderize bread, ingredients like honey/sugar, dry milk solids, and potato starch are used by home bakers.  Google potato bread recipes for a good, soft loaf....or check out the King Arthur flour website for a wealth of bread recipes.

In case you're referring to dark, soft, dinner rolls try this King Arthur flour clone of chain-restaurant dark dinner rolls.  It's a simple part whole wheat bread enriched with honey, and is is pretty dead-on for the bread at Outback, etc.

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This is an excellent recipe if the dark bread is your goal. It doesn't call for anything you can't get at your local grocery, and HungryC is right, it's pretty dead on for the outback bread.