Why You Should Be Saving Pasta Water For Homemade Bread

Homemade bread isn't complicated to make but there are quite a few little tricks that you can use to make those loaves as good as the ones from your favorite bakery. Fortunately, most of these tricks are quite simple and make a significant difference to the results. For example, adding some oil can improve your homemade bread's texture. There are also some unusual moves like adding peach skins which can upgrade bread in multiple ways, namely by giving yeast a bit of extra sugar and your bread a touch of fruit flavor. But it's always a good idea to focus on getting the best texture and rise from your loaf, and this is where pasta water comes into the picture.

Once you've boiled your noodles in salty water and used a little more of the liquid to bring your pasta sauce together, you're still generally left with a good amount of pasta water. This starchy, salty liquid can add moisture to your homemade bread and also help it get nice and fluffy during baking. In fact, food icon Nigella Lawson even championed using pasta water to bake bread in a tweet.

When using pasta water in your homemade bread, add it as a substitute for any other liquid ingredients like milk or water. If you're unsure about the move, substitute only part of the liquid used in the original recipe. So, if you're swapping it for milk, use half the volume of milk specified in the recipe and an equal amount of pasta water. This way, you maintain the proportions of the recipe, which is especially crucial when baking.

The most important thing to remember is to check the pasta water's saltiness. Since there's generally quite a bit of salt in the liquid, you have to adjust any additional salt the bread recipe calls for, lest you over-salt the bread. Depending on how much pasta water you use, you may even have to forego any additional salt and dilute the liquid to avoid overly salty bread.

If you want to get the nice rise and improved texture that pasta water provides but don't want to whip up an Italian snack every time you bake bread, there are alternatives. For one, there's a quick way to make a substitute for pasta water. You can also employ water that's been used to cook potatoes since spuds release starch into their cooking liquid as well. Be sure to taste the water, as your bread could also end up getting some potato flavor, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.