Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The texture of your bread is going to rely more on the ingredients you use than the type of machine you bought. Have you tried looking for recipes for the type of crusty bread you described? The recipes included with the machine are usually for the "American ca-ca" bread as I like to refer to it.
Beware of bread recipes that call for more than 1 tablespoon of instant yeast per pound of flour: your bread will surely taste like yeast, not bread, with that much yeast.
Thanks for all the great tips! I've printed them out for future reference.
Yes, the texture of the bread machine bread is... well, I'll agree with your description!
Here is one of the typical recipes from the breadmaker booklet. They are all the same basically and vary only in the seasoning ingredients. Your yeast advice really applies here but I'm wondering if the breadmaker can even use less because of the short time (45 mins start to finish) involved?
ITALIAN HERB BREAD
1/2 cup water, 80-90F
1 tb butter or margarine
1 1/3 cups bread flour
1 tb sugar
1 tb dry milk
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsp (1/4-oz pkg) fast-rising or bread-machine yeast
Add ingredients to breadmaker pan in order listed in recipe, liquids first, then butter or margarine, next the dry ingredients and finally the yeast. Position pan into breadmaker and lock into place; close cover. Plug breadmaker in outlet. Press Bread Select button for type of bread being made (choices are only 'Basic' meaning using white bread flour, and 'Wheat'). Press Start/Stop to turn machine on.
It takes 45 mins for the machine to run through the knead cycle, then a rise cycle, then about 22 minutes after turn-on it goes into Bake cycle.
I've always thought that an entire package sounded like a lot of yeast for only 1 1/3 cups of flour. What do you think? Is the problem "yeast overload"? There are 3 tsp in a tb, so my bread machine recipes require a little over 2/3 tb of yeast for ... um.... is that only about 1/3 lb of flour?
I have tried "proofing" the yeast first in warm water with half the sugar, for about 15 mins, and then adding the rest of the ingredients but it didn't make any difference in the finished product.
Do you think the cakey, dense, yeasty result is just the nature of the beast (a breadmaker designed to go from start to finish in only 45 mins, thus requiring a huge amount of yeast)? That's why I was wondering if a "regular" breadmaker like a Zojirushi would do things the correct way ... or are they all pretty much the same?
Making bread isn't hard--but it does make a mess in the kitchen! (Easily cleaned up, tho!!!)
It's just mixing and then kneading....not hard once you get the hang of it.
Try it! After you've done it a couple of times, you'll get the feel of the dough, and you'll know if it's at the right consistancy, just by touch.
You don't need to "proof" the yeast, nowadays. Just buy a packet of Active Dry Yeast...it works great.
I have a Breadman machine and use it 1-2 times a week. I can make a large variety of breads, with different textures, crusts and tastes. Depends on the ingredients. I have not yet tried to make a Ciabatta kind of bread, with the various sized holes and more "toothy" texture. I do find that adding wheat gluten tends to make dough more elastic. And the suggestion of letting the breadmaker do the mixing and kneading up to the final rise is a good one.
One of the limitations of breadmakers is that you are stuck with the pan inside the machine. But you can take out the dough ball after the last punch down is completed and then shape it as you wish and either bake it in a different shaped pan, or on a flat surface.
I have come to love the many exotic ingredients I can get from the King Arthur Flour website, things that my three local supermarkets don't carry. I am getting so good at this I am honestly thinking of making bread from scratch one day.
Also, one thing you said about liking the bread with the holes. The only way to get them to form is to have a high-gluten flour, either by getting a good winter wheat flour, or by adding in gluten, and giving it time to rise. That means no short cycles, you need to use the long cycles like the whole wheat so that the rise can really activate. DontH8me gave some really good tips- the whole misting water in the oven thing is tho try and achieve that crust that you like. Though I've heard you spray the oven..not the actual bread itself, so you might want to look into that. Tell us how it turns out!
It sounds to me like your breadmaker is forgoing quality for speed. That's probably your biggest problem.
Bread needs a good amount of time to rise. Basically, if it rises quickly at a high temp, your bread quality is going to be low.
My bread maker takes almost four hours to make a loaf of bread. That includes over an hour of just rising.
Make sure you use the right flour (strong bread flour), make sure the dried yeast is fresh and don't accidently kill the yeast by adding the salt on top of it!
totallyfrazzled, that recipe you posted has a LOT of yeast in comparison to the amount of flour. I would expect to see at least 3 cups or more flour in a recipe with a full package of yeast. The ingredients and recipe do matter a lot.
I love my bread machine but I have not once baked in it. I always bake in the oven.
I've made a lot of traditional bread recipes in the machine (dough cycle) as well, so long as they didn't require more flour than the machine could accommodate. (For a 1-1/2 pound small loaf "full size" machine I believe this is around 4 cups or so depending what quantity of other ingredients are in the recipe.)
You say you have the dinner size machine. Interesting that all the recipes I have found for that machine use essentially the same amount of yeast and somewhere in the 1 cup-ish range of flour. I am not an expert on the "science" behind bread making but that sounds like an awful lot of yeast for that much flour. Unless there is something particular to the smaller machine that maybe uses that much yeast to rise faster since the machine is so small? I also found some "regular" small recipes not intended for the bread machine, and they essentially use half the amount of yeast for a quantity of flour similar to your recipe.
I would just move up to a full size machine, skip baking in the machine and use the oven (the tips above about spritzing is good for "crusty" crust)-and freeze whatever you don't need at a meal. Most breads freeze well.
My machine does I think 90 minutes on a "dough" cycle alone.
My next experiment is without the bread machine-the artisan type bread recipe from Cook's Illustrated that you make in a Dutch oven.
I no longer bake in my bread machine either. I make the dough in there than take it out, shape the loaf and bake it myself in the oven. The taste is so much better than what the machine produces.
I have a 10 yr. old westbend machine. It does a good job with the kneading and rising, baking not so much.
I too have been contemplating the Zojirushi but just can't justify the expense yet.
I bought a Zojiurushi machine a few months ago, and I love it! It is far superior to the other crappy ones I have owned. It has a really long cycle and the bread is pretty decent, however, I don't think the bread is quite like the kind you would make in the oven, although I admit I have only tried a few from the booklet.
It does a great job of mixing the dough, however and has a dough cycle, so I just might try something more exotic and finish it in the oven and see what happens.
I bought a Zojiurushi machine a few months ago, and I love it! It is far superior to the other crappy ones I have owned. It has a really long cycle and the bread is pretty decent, however, I don't think the bread is quite like the kind you would make in the oven, although I admit I have only tried a few from the booklet.
It does a great job of mixing the dough, however and has a dough cycle, so I just might try something more exotic and finish it in the oven and see what happens.
That is what is holding me back from buying one. Do I really want to spend over 200.00 for a machine I most likely use to make dough then bake in my own oven? I just can't quite convince myself to buy one for that reason.
Last machine I bought was a $40-50 dollar sunbeam from Walmart. Totally cheap, and it did a fantastic job. My tricks are to use good bread flour or add gluten, use the longest whole wheat bread cycle, and keep and eye on it when it goes into it's first knead cycle to see if the consistency is good. If not, a little more liquid or a little more flour solves that.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
