Improve my bran muffins

June 23, 2018 7:46 AM

I just made bran muffins for the first time and they came out okay but next time I'd like the mix to be denser, rougher and crumblier. What do I need to do to improve these muffins?

For reference, I used this muffin recipe and they came out fine (basically exactly like the pictures) but very soft and cakey with a small soft crumb. They were more like slightly wholemeal regular muffins than like the total branfest I'm aiming for.

By comparison, the kind of bran muffins I'm aiming for look like this (from a muffin bakery in my hometown - I haven't seen this style of muffin served anywhere else).

The dream muffins have a much crunchier crust and are generally a lot dryer and crumblier with a larger crumb than the ones I made just now, but still semi-moist inside. I'm either looking for suggestions on how to modify the recipe I linked to above to get muffins closer to the ones in the picture from the dream muffin bakery, or for an entirely new recipe that will make the crunchy, fibrous muffins of my dreams.

posted by terretu to Food & Drink (6 answers total)

If you're looking for a craggier result with a larger crumb, one place to begin is that many classic bran muffin recipes call for bran cereal rather than bran itself.
posted by jocelmeow at 10:14 AM on June 23, 2018

I don't know but....I believe that soft cakey texture is due to an abundance of fat. I would try the standard trick of substituting applesauce for 1/2 the fat. Note however, they won't keep as long as full fat muffins.

And I suspect that a crunchy crust would be due to sugar. I'd try sprinkling the tops with sugar before baking.

The amount of mixing could affect the texture.
posted by SemiSalt at 12:11 PM on June 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Yeah, you want one of the recipes that use bran cereal. Try this one or this one.
posted by elsietheeel at 12:46 PM on June 23, 2018

Eggs, fat, and sugar(honey) make muffins tender. Compare muffin recipes to scone recipes. I think you want something more scone-like. If I wanted crunch, I'd make coffee cake-type topping; I've encountered that on bakery muffins, but I don't want extra sugar. For scones or muffins, don't overmix the batter; it enables the gluten. Rice flour tends to have different properties and has no gluten and you might try using some rice flour in place of whole wheat; it might give you the crumbly texture.

I make bran muffins routinely and use whole wheat, bran, pumpkin, eggs, apricots, walnut, ginger, cinnamon, with proportions loosely taken from Mark Bittman's Muffins, Infinite Ways, linked above. I use OJ or cider instead of milk to activate the baking powder because I don't eat dairy. If I use too little sugar and fat, they don't go crumbly like a scone, they go more dense, because whole wheat.
posted by theora55 at 2:00 PM on June 23, 2018

Response by poster: I've made the first recipe elsietheeel linked to twice now and it's exactly what I was looking for!
posted by terretu at 1:41 PM on June 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's the traditional bran muffin in my family and it's delicious as heck! Yay, I'm glad it worked for you!
posted by elsietheeel at 2:38 PM on September 27, 2018