Living · 6 pages · 12 min
How bread crust browns
The dried surface gets hotter than the wet crumb and browns.
From the opening
Bread crust browns because the surface dries and then heats well past the moist interior, where sugars react with proteins. The color and much of the toasted flavor are products of those reactions, not a brown pigment already in the flour. The opening covers why the crumb stays near boiling, maillard browning, not only caramel, and what an alkaline surface changes.
The rest of the brief — the later sections and the reading notes — opens after Stripe confirms payment.
Inside
- Why the crumb stays near boiling
- Maillard browning, not only caramel
- What an alkaline surface changes
- Why toast browns a second time
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- The Maillard reaction of sugars with amino acids
- Evaporative cooling that limits moist crumb temperature