Coconut bread dough is crumbly and does not come together to knead
So I followed the following recipe once and the bread buns turned perfect. Today I decided to make it more coconut-ish so that it tastes and smells like coconut even more than the previous batch. I substituted half of the flour with coconut flour, added more coconut flakes and substituted the butter with coconut butter (that is what I did the first time, using coconut butter)! It seems that I messed it up and it is so crumbly that I cannot knead it! I came up with the idea that I might make small buns that look like cookie but then I added yeast, how to fix it? Or what to make with this crumbly dough?
4 cups flour
3 eggs
4 tbsp coconut flakes
50 gr butter
water
2 tsp yeast
vanilla 1/2 tsp
salt 1 tsp
sugar 1/3 cup
Best Answer
You can't substitute a non-wheat flour for a wheat flour and expect similar baking properties; bread doughs rely on gluten for their structure which is why gluten-free baking is difficult.
The simplest way to fix this would be to double the recipe, look at what you've already added, and add more ingredients up to the correct amounts. You can freeze bread dough which helps mitigate the 'too much' problem although I appreciate it might get you through your ingredients faster than you'd want.
If you're dead set against that, add more flour in small quantities and try to knead the dough until it has a workable consistency, and see how it comes out.
For your broader desire for the bread to have a stronger coconut flavour, consider buying coconut extract or essence and adding that to the original recipe.
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Why is my dough not coming together?
Pastry dough becomes crumbly mainly when it is too dry. If there is not enough moisture to hold the dough together, it will just fall apart.How do you make coconut flour stick together?
You will have to bind them well. Products that help bind are: eggs, liquid sweeteners and flax seeds. If you choose to use eggs as a binding agent, a good rule of thumb to follow is 1 egg to every ounce of coconut flour used.Why is my dough breaking when kneading?
If you knead dough too hard, it will tear. This happens because the gluten strands get stretched too far and break. To prevent this from happening, you need to stretch the dough gently, but firmly enough to develop the gluten strands. It helps if you let the dough rest between stretches.How do you fix crumbly bread dough?
Similarly, many bread recipes include a fat such as butter, lard, oil, or shortening. These also retard the yeast's growth and keep the bread moist, resulting in less crumb. Try adding an extra tablespoon or two of fat to your recipe and see if it improves the crumb.The 7 Most Common Breadmaking Mistakes You’re Probably Making
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Answer 2
Coconut flour is extremely absorbent (see my answer here).
Given that you went half and half, that means 2 cups of coconut flour or around 225 g. Added to the 2 cups of AP flour (250 g), that's around 475 g of total flour. To even have a chance at making a workable dough, I'd estimate at the bare minimum, you'd want a 200% hydration rate. That means roughly 3 ½ cups of water on top of the eggs to even have a shot. But I doubt even that would work. Coconut flour is so absorbent that it will compete with the regular flour, hoarding water and preventing it from hydrating well enough to form the gluten necessary to provide an overall structure. Moreover, coconut flour possesses no inherent structure-building properties like regular wheat flour.
I'd start by trying no more than 10% coconut flour and 90% AP flour. That may require an extra egg or two and a little extra water. By starting with a small difference like this, you should be able to judge whether it's feasible to increase the coconut flour ratio even more, and if so, how much extra moisture you'd need.
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