Why is my cake/bread not white from inside despite using white flour?

[LaCitrouille]

Hi everyone!

Can someone please help me find out why my cakes and bread rolls don't come out light in colour as the ones we buy from the supermarkets?

I've been experimenting with several recipes but always end up with a dark yellow crumble! I've just made that honeycomb brioche and followed the recipe to the letter, it came out tasty but the colour is nowhere near white, like some dark beige colour?

Any ideas please

Is it the butter?

I know when I wanted to make a white cake I had to use some disgusting lard type stuff. Trex?

Honeycomb anything should be golden surely?

I forgot to say that I'm using all purpose flour. Our local bakery sold us their massive 30kg bags of all purpose flour for a small price when they had to close down because of the Coronavirus! So I have plenty of flour (and time!) to use up, and I would love to have white fluffy cakes and bread.

Mopolop
That's interesting! Most of the recipes that I use call for oil and not butter. But I have used butter for some and still not as white as it looks. Also the bread ones are just basic flour, yeast, salt and water but are not as white as they look on YouTube videos.

Thepigeonsarecoming

It's not honeycomb sweet. It's a brioche in the shape of a beehive, hence the name.

Sorry OP I read it as honeycomb brioche cake

For white cakes normally you use mostly or all egg whites as the yolks will darken the batter.

Brioche is an egg-based dough and is normally yellow in color.

Dark egg yolks?

its the butter if you want a white cake use a cheap butter

Mmmm really never thought of the butter or egg yolks this way! I will be trying to bake a classic sponge with egg whites alone and see if it makes a difference.

Any idea about why bread crumb isn’t white either?

Thank you

Are you sure you’re making brioche? It normally looks like this - yellow crumb

Missyoumuch

This is the one I made, but obviously mine wasn't white like the one in the picture.

Can you put a pic of the recipe?

Here it is

It will be the butter then as the dough doesn't include eggs.

You will never get your bread as white as mass produced shop bought. Manufactured bread uses additives and whitening agents in the flour to get it white. Just be happy with your more natural product. Also photographs are manipulated to make the picture look pretty, so are not true colour.

It’s probably unbleached flour so (hopefully you’ll be glad to know) a purer and healthier product.

Look for E171 in the ingredients list of the foods you’re buying. This is titanium dioxide, which is a whitening agent.

I wouldn’t compare home baked with shop bought: manufacturers add a whole pile of nasty additives to extend shelf life/bulk things up/make it look prettier.

The natural colour of baked foods is never white. That is achieved by using bleaches, artificial colours and colour enhancers. Or filters if you're looking at a photograph. The natural colour is always yellower. The whitest cake you can make without additives is Angel Food cake, which is made without yolks.