This condition can be caused by any number of things including:

• Too much liquid – try decreasing water or milk by one to two tablespoons
• Not enough salt – try increasing salt by ¼ teaspoon
• Not enough flour – try increasing the flour by by one to two tablespoons
• Too much yeast – try decreasing yeast by ¼ to ½ teaspoon
• Flour – The flour might have been old or not the right type
• Yeast – The yeast might have been old or might have been the wrong type for the setting (regular yeast vs. rapid rise yeast)

So how do you go about fixing the problem?  This is what I advise:

• As a first step, try making the bread again.  Maybe you accidentally  measured something wrong or forgot an ingredient.
• If you’re making the recipe correctly, the next step is to try it again making just one or two changes.  Resist the temptation to change three or four items at once.
• Make notes about the changes.  How did you vary the recipe?  What was the result?
• Use your revised recipe as the new baseline.  Look at the result, look at the variables and  try again.   For example, maybe you adjusted the yeast and didn’t notice enough of a change?  No problem. On the next loaf make you can try an additional change to the yeast or maybe a change to the salt.
• Bread suffering from The Big Valley usually tastes just fine.  If it doesn’t consider using it in one of these recipes for leftover bread.

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1. Bread Troubleshooting – Bread That Rises and Then Falls

What happened?  To help figure out the issue, take a close look at the loaf.  Did it rise at all?  The answer to that question will point you in one of two directions.

The Bread Brick -  the bread rose a little, but not enough:

• Not enough liquid – try increasing water or milk by one to two tablespoons
• Too much salt – try decreasing salt by ¼ teaspoon
• Not enough sugar – try increasing sugar by ½ teaspoon
• Not enough yeast – try increasing yeast by ¼ to ½ teaspoon
• Flour – The flour might have been old or not the right type
• Yeast – The yeast might have been old or might have been the wrong type for the setting (regular yeast vs. rabid rise yeast)

The Uber Bread Brick  – the bread didn’t rise at all:

• Flour – The flour might have been old or not the right type
• Yeast – The yeast might have been old or might have been the wrong type for the setting (regular yeast vs. rapid rise yeast) or maybe no yeast was added at all

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While I can’t find any scientific research to back me up, I think this was a problem caused by the record-setting heatwave our area was experiencing.

Other, more common, causes of The Big Valley are:

• Too much liquid
• Too little salt
• Too little flour
• Too much yeast

The good news is that this problem doesn’t usually affect the flavor of the bread.  So if I like the way the bread tastes, I’ll try making it again.  This tests to see if I measured correctly.  If that was the problem then the second loaf will turn out fine.

If the second loaf comes out with a dip in the middle, I adjust the above ingredients or find a slightly different recipe.  How long will I keep it up?  I think the final version of this potato bread recipe was my sixth try.

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If, heaven forbid, we have another heat wave like this, I’m going to add another quarter of a teaspoon of salt to the dough to deal with the over enthusiastic yeast.

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1. Hot Weather Menu