When I make pancakes and muffins from scratch, when they’re hot or even fairly fresh (within six hours) they taste wonderful. But if I put them in a plastic bag and refrigerate or freeze them, the texture changes to something unpleasant and unpalatable. The kids will eat heaps of fresh pancakes or muffins, but the next day - assuming the things didn’t get eaten up instantly - they won’t touch them, and I can’t blame them.
What’s going on? It can’t be that these quick breads have dried out, if they’re put into plastic right away. (For the record, yeast breads around here don’t seem to keep as pleasant a texture after about 6 hours, either.)
Is this why commercial bakeries add ‘dough conditioners’?
Somehow my thought chain wandered until I heard Hardy telling Laurel, “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.” Not sure why that popped up. <shakes head>
Ennyhoo. Taken in reverse order:
Are you talking about homemade yeast bread? If not, then there’s a possibility that you’ve got a low humidity problem. If that’s the answer, then getting a breadbox (of the tightly closing variety) will fix it. Otherwise … Oh, and you do keep the cut end covered with something impermeable?
As for the pancakes and muffins, it is entirely possible that you stir them too much (as opposed to yeast breads, for which the more stirring/kneading, the better - except for sweet yeast breads like coffeecake). In both cases, you do not want to stir hard, and you want to stop stirring while the batter is not completely mixed. Either, much less both, of these mistakes will make the quick breads tougher - regardless of the environment - than the proper, minimal mixing “from the get-go.”
Not sure why that popped up. <shakes head>