What happens if you overmix muffin batter

Stir with a spoon until no dry streaks remain. Smoother, runnier batter As we mixed the batter more, the lumps of dry ingredients combined more evenly into the wet ingredients, resulting in a smoother, runnier batter. Tops of overmixed muffins, two per group. As mixing time increased, the muffin tops became smoother.

Smoother muffin surfaces with divots Given that the batter became smoother, it was not surprising to see the surfaces of the muffins shown above become smoother as well.

Insides of overmixed muffins. As mixing time increased, tunneling increased and the muffins became taller. Longer, vertical air bubbles As you can see above, as we mixed the muffins more, we saw long, wormy air bubbles, a phenomenon called tunneling.

Taller, pointier muffin tops To understand the differences in our muffin tops, we need to understand how they form. Chewier, more bread-like texture As we described with creatures in tide pools it makes more sense if you read it! References Corriher, Shirley O. Bakewise ; Scribner: New York, Figoni, P. How Baking Works , 3rd ed. Share this: Facebook Pinterest. Like this: Like Loading Previous Post Previous post: Gluten in the Kitchen. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:.

Email required Address never made public. Name required. Create your website with WordPress. Follow Following. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Watch my muffin method web story here. Sure, the muffin method sounds like a day at the beach:. So muffin recipes that are written to be made using the creaming method will generally have more fat and sugar in them than traditional muffins.

This makes them cupcakes and not muffins. I enjoy a good cupcake, but when I want a muffin, I want that tender, almost fall-apart consistency, and I want it lean enough low enough in fat that I can slather it with butter and jam without feeling too guilty. For example, these chocolate cherry buttermilk muffins. A great example of the power of the Muffin Method! Recipes that check those boxes are generally quick bread coffee cakes like this brown butter blueberry buckle , pancakes, banana bread , and other classic quick breads like cornbread.

Here are the steps for performing the muffin mixing method. This is a method you do not want to use the mixer for. Trust me, as much as you love your stand mixer, your muffins will be better if you mix them gently by hand. More on this in a bit.

Whisk your dry ingredients together very well. You are looking for even dispersal of the salt and leaveners. More would be good.

When you add the fat to the liquid, you want to make sure that all of the liquid ingredients are at room temperature. You want the fat to be evenly dispersed throughout the batter. Pour the wet on top of the dry and fold them gently together. Remember, in the two-stage mixing method , we coated our flour with a good amount of fat to inhibit gluten formation.

In the muffin method, we are pouring a ton of wet ingredients on poor, defenseless flour. How do we keep from having dense, chewy muffins, then? NOTE : Stir in your mix-ins before you get your batter completely mixed.

At this point, if you are leavening with baking powder, you can let the batter sit for minutes. This gives the flour time to properly hydrate. It will sort of magically finish mixing itself. Double-acting baking powder gives some rise when it gets wet and then some more when it gets hot, so your muffins will still rise in the oven, even after sitting out for a bit. If the recipe only calls for baking soda, skip the resting step , as the bubbles are all given up when the soda gets wet.

With recipes that only call for baking soda, you want to get those little guys in the oven as quickly as possible before the chemical reaction stops. Scoop your batter into well-greased or paper-lined muffin tins. Bake at a relatively high temperature—F is a good place to start. To me, and to lots of folks, muffins are defined by their crowns—their majestic peaks.

In order to get this to happen, you have to bake at a high enough temperature that the edges of the muffin set pretty quickly. The last to set is the very peak. If you bake at a lower temperature, you will end up with something that looks more like a cupcake rather than a peaked muffin. If you like them that way, go for it, and bake at a lower temperature. Remove from oven. Cool in pans for about ten minutes, and then turn out to cool completely—or not.

You could just go ahead and eat one. One of the joys of a great muffin is the mix-in possibilities. Aside from the crumb, pay attention to the shape of your muffins. They should rise high and be domed on top, like non-craggy mountain peaks. That will give you a bit of a buffer to help ensure that your mixins stay suspended. I learned that trick from Stella Parks over at Serious Eats. The keen thing about making muffins is that you can make them in all sorts of sizes— mini muffins , regular muffins or jumbo muffins.

Pans are readily available, too, which makes it easy to get started. The main challenge of the muffin method is mixing the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients without activating too much gluten. This is especially challenging with traditional muffins which contain relatively little sugar and fat that would help tenderize gluten.

Baking powder reacts with liquid and heat to create bubbles. Baking soda reacts with acids to create bubbles. Making a well in the dry ingredients just means using a spoon or whisk to make sure that your dry ingredients are higher on the sides of your bowl and have a depression in the center. This depression leaves a place for you to pour your wet ingredients. Then when you start folding the two together, the flour around the edges will naturally fall into the center and on top of the wet ingredients.

This helps you mix more quickly while still being gentle to inhibit gluten formation. Muffin batter is generally fairly thick and can be somewhat lumpy. Not just from the mix-ins, but also from little pockets of flour. If your muffin batter is too smooth, it probably means you have overmixed it. Overmixed muffins will bake up dense and chewy. The tunnels form as the bubbles in the batter work their way up and out of the batter during baking.

If you are leavening your muffins with baking powder or a mixture of baking powder and baking soda, you can let the batter sit out for about 20 minutes. This will help make sure your flour is nice and hydrated before baking.

To fill muffin cups without making a mess, either mix the batter in a batter bowl with a spout or scrape your batter into a pitcher. Alternatively, you may fill your muffin cups with a portion scoop or an ice cream scoop. They should be a lovely golden brown. Allow muffins to sit about minutes before removing from the pan to cool completely on cooling racks. After allowing your muffins to cool for minutes in the pan, I like to use a small, tapered spatula or even just a butter knife to lift up one side of the muffins so I can then grab them and remove them to a cooling rack.

To make sure your muffins are baked through, take the internal temperature. You can leave a comment on the post, and I will respond within 24 hours. NOTE : Most of my recipes are written by weight and not volume, even the liquids. Even though I try to provide you with volume measurements as well, I encourage you to buy a kitchen scale for ease of measuring, accuracy, and consistency. This is the scale I use, love, and recommend. I have Convenient share buttons that float to the left on desk top and on mobile which invite you to share on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter or Yummly.

If you make the recipe, please consider rating it a rating and a review. You can do this via the recipe card in the post. Reviews really help sell the recipe, and negative reviews help me tune into what people really want to have explained better, so any ratings and reviews are helpful!

Also feel free to tag me on Instagram at onlinepastrychef with pcorecipe so I can find your creation. Thank you! Baking time and yield are both for standard muffins. If making minis or jumbos, adjust accordingly.

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Also interested in the response to the blueberry question above…. John B—Read your recipe for cranberry-lime muffins over at your place. They sound really good! Daily Spud—Hooray! If you understand the differences between muffins and cupcakes, and why they are different, I am doing my job!

Gastroanthropologist—I say either frozen-not-thawed or fresh-not-mushy blueberries. Never frozen-then-thawed. I do take a few and press them into the top of the muffin batter so their little tops are still showing for added insurance there will be Even Berry Distribution. Goodness, what a wealth of incredibly useful information.

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Yes, bakers need not fear hot temps! Muffins need it for that poof. I had to make blueberry muffins we called them breakfast cakes for our guests to enjoy the following morning after their dinner by the mountains! I had to use frozen — the little IQF wild ones from Maine. Yes — I always sprinkled more berries on top and a little crumble topping. If you make enough of them you know exactly how much batter to put in the ice cream scoop for the perfect sized muffins.

I had been searching for the reason why my muffins were flat and not domed. I also wanted to have a recipe that would give me the really tall dome like you get in bakeries.

I just made your recipe and everyone should know that these were absolutely terrific and everything that you said they would be… tender and moist inside with a slightly crunchy top. My only question is how do you get a higher dome? Can I fill it higher to get more of a dome, or can the muffin pan have something to do with it?

I used a calphalon muffin pan. Hi, Tara! Glad the muffins turned out so well for you! You can try filling the cups almost all the way to the top, especially if your batter is nice and thick. You can also add a judicious amount of extra baking powder.

Thanks for responding Jenni! So I take it the all purpose flour was in fact okay to use? Asked 11 years, 3 months ago. Active 8 years, 2 months ago. Viewed 43k times. In muffin recipes, the instructions often say to stir the mixture till "just combined". Improve this question. Aaronut AnishaKaul I merged the question, I am sure Sam will get points from other questions and answers, he is doing very well. He just got 10 p from my upvote.

You could have merged this thread with mine. Anyway, it is mod's call. Does this answer your question? Mixing liquid ingredients to "just combine" to dry ingredients for muffins — Luciano. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Joe Joe And to expand on this, the reason that tunneling happens with overdeveloped gluten is that the bubbles of carbon dioxide generated by the rising process are trapped by a too-strong gluten network. A weaker matrix lets some of the CO2 come out of the muffin as it bakes, and distributes more evenly.

TFD Sam Ley Sam Ley 4, 1 1 gold badge 21 21 silver badges 25 25 bronze badges. Sam, if I mix the batter fine but "quickly" within seconds, will that work? I mean is the "time" problem? Both issues are important, I don't think I could say which is a bigger deal. I know I have success when I mix just before placing in the pans, and not mixing heavily. The hard part is that words don't do a good job of explaining things like texture.

For that, pictures are better, and experience is better still. Check out this episode of Good Eats - Muffin Method Man which is an excellent show for learning cooking techniques covering muffin preparation: Part 1 youtu. Thanks Sam, that was helpful. He mixed it 13 times in all with a large spoon.

Just to add, if you overstir what will usually happen is you'll end up with massive cavities inside the muffin due to gluten formation, surrounded by tougher dough.

If you stir appropriately you'll have lots of small little cavities which will have a nice tender structure when you bite. Sebiddychef Sebiddychef 3, 4 4 gold badges 17 17 silver badges 29 29 bronze badges. Thanks, I'll look out what is a gluten, and which flours have it. All wheat flours have gluten, and most related species like barley and rye.

Gluten is formed from two proteins that are naturally occurring in the grain, gliadin and glutelin.