Can I increase cooking time of bread to make it less gooey?

Question

I've been experimenting with gluten-free baking (due to Celiac, not because I think it will make me skinny). I've made great cakes and cookies, but recently tried to make rolls. In the process I've discovered how to make waffles and muffins, completely by accident. Today while "playing around" with my muffin recipe, hoping to make delicious oat bran muffins, I noticed that the insides didn't quite get done. Eventually they did sort of solidify.

So, what does any of this have to do with bread? Well, for some reason the "muffins" turned out instead to be bread. I don't mean "bread-like" I mean "bread" except in muffin tins. So, using this exact recipe I should be able make bread, but I'm worried about the bread not getting done all the way through since the cross section in a bread pan (which I'd have to buy) is larger than the muffin tins I was using.

My thought on how to "solve" this problem would be to lower the temperature a bit, and then extend the cooking time. The current muffins were cooked for about 30 minutes at 375 °F. I was thinking maybe 325 °F for 40?

Answer 1

Generally speaking, no I don't think you can.

I've had bread which has turned out sticky, gooey, or doughy in the center. Usually, when we see this, we stick it back in to bake longer - there's a difference between under-baked and gooey, though it can be hard to tell at a glance. Also usually, this doesn't work to make the center of gooey bread less so (except by drying out the whole loaf, which is not much of an improvement). Gooey-in-the-center bread is (for me) often caused by other texture problems, often not rising enough, not holding its crumb, being dense as well as gooey.

If your bread is under-cooked, then lower and slower cooking will help in that it lets the center cook longer without overdoing the crust. If that is the primary problem, your solution should help - though you should perhaps try baking to internal temperature or looking for physical markers of done-ness (like a hollow sound on tapping) instead of relying on baking time alone. I should note there is some difference in texture depending on when the loaf is cut into (the release of steam and temperature, see questions here and here). An under-baked loaf which has been cut into to be found gooey will likely not improve as much from further baking as compared to the same loaf cooked straight through, and a loaf which has been allowed to finish cooling before cutting will be dryer and sturdier than one cut into while still warm.

The sorts of things which usually do help gooey bread, or perhaps I mean the sorts of things whose lacking usually causes gooey-ness, includes using enough and strong enough leavening, making sure the dough is strong enough, with enough binders, to hold the air bubbles and let it rise well, and maybe trying a flatter, wider loaf (less pressure from the weight of the dough helps the dough keep its rise), or just smaller ones for quicker cooking to help set the crumb before the leavening is exhausted.

Answer 2

I bake a lot of sourdough bread, and I find that the higher the hydration percentage (the ratio of water to flour) the "gooier" the bread. You might want to try using less water in your recipe.