by Maria C Collins

Created on: November 09, 2010

You see bread machines at every car boot sale. You hear people saying that bread machines produce poor results. Their difficulty is that they buy the machine and then fail to read the instructions. To get good results from your bread machine, you must read all the manufacturer’s instructions thoroughly.

The manufacturer’s all supply recipe books with their machines. The first few times you use the machine follow one of the manufacturer’s recipes to the letter. It is all very well to adapt your own bread recipes, when you are au fait with how the machine works. In baking any type of bread, quantities are important. Measure your ingredients exactly not by eye or by guesswork use the measuring cup and spoon provided by the manufacturer of your bread machine, even a tiny bit short or heavy, on any ingredient, will make a great difference to your finished loaf.

Ensure that the pan, into which you are going to place your ingredients, is perfectly clean and dry. All cookery is based on chemical reactions and nowhere is this truer than in bread making. Yeast is a living growing organism, you feed it with sugar and the magic that turns your ingredients into bread happens. You do not want your yeast to start growing before the appropriate place in the bread machine cycle. If your bread pan is perfectly clean and dry, you will not upset your yeast’s action.

Put your ingredients into the bread maker pan, in the order suggested by the manufacturer. The idea is to keep the yeast separate from the liquid and the sugar and salt. If you find that the order suggested by the manufacturer does not work, some manufacturers tell you to put the liquid in first, and I found that this did not work in my machine, reverse the order. I now put the yeast in first, then the flour, then the other dry ingredients and the water on top.

Pay attention to the flour that you use. You need strong plain flour for bread making. Some flours advertised for use in bread makers are not successful. Use one from a well-established flour manufacturer. Use good dried yeast, and do not keep yeast for too long, this is one time, when use-by dates are crucial. Ask around amongst your circle or post a question on a cookery forum, experienced bread machine users will advise you as to which brands of flours and yeasts are the best for bread machines.

All this sounds an awful lot of fuss, but when you make bread by hand, it is even more of a hullabaloo. You have to be sure that you do not

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