I will be using King Arthur all purpose flour and Costco yeast. Would this work and give good bread? Anything I should know about how to use this machine or about the ingredients that I use to make bread with it?
One thing that concerns me is that the bowel where the bread is made may have one or two small spots where the non-stick coating has rubbed off. Would this contaminate the bread or cause issues? I don’t like non-stick coatings in general but I guess all bread machines come with it.
I downloaded the user manual for it but have not looked at it yet.
Thank you for your feedback and knowledge share.
I bought the bread machine so now I am stuck with it for better or worst. It looks like a good machine. I would have loved to be able to make sourdough bread with the sourdough starter but when trying to make bread without bread machine the results were not good. Tips on how to use this machine for bread making would be helpful. Since I plan to use all purpose flour and when doing that without the bread machine I was advised to use a lot more water I plan to do that. Any other tips? Thank you.
It will take some trial and error to get a good sourdough out of a bread machine. But with some tweaking it can be done. Just don’t expect perfect results straight away. Does it come with a manual and recipes?
Yes there is a manual that has recipes in it. Can you outline the general tips needed to get good bread out of this machine? I know experience is needed but what are the things I need to look out for?
Also this machine makes a big loaf like 2 lbs, so I need to try and have as few mistakes as possible or else a lot of material would be wasted.
Well the best advice is to follow the recipes exactly by weighing and measuring ingredients and putting them into the machine as advised. First try a straight yeasted dough to put the machine through its paces. If you want sourdough it’ll probably be best to convert a recipe from the manual that you like after trying the yeasted versions out.
I have an idea of using yeast as well as some sour dough starter. What are the guidelines for doing it this way? Do I follow the recipe exactly and then just add some sourdough starter on top?
Also since I plan to use all purpose flour and all the recipes in the book call for bread flour, how much extra water should I add?
One last thing is the machine did not come with its own measuring cups and I watched a video that showed the measuring cups that originally come with the machine measure less than regular measurements. Do you know how to compensate for this?
I imagine if it’s a relatively quick recipe then you can swap some of the flour and water for starter and use he same amount of yeast. Most of the rise will come from the yeast and flavour from the starter. It all depends on the time of the dough cycle and how much starter you use. If it’s a long cycle and you use a good percentage of starter then lower the amount of yeast. Will take a bit of toggling but i’m sure even if not perfect at first it’ll be tasty.
I would imagine AP flour needs a bit less water than bread flour. First try the recipe as it is but use AP flour. A bread machine can take high hydration doughs as it will essentially be a pan bread and you aren’t handling it. If the hydration is a bit high it won’t matter too much. You can always lower it a bit next time. Trial and error.
Well measuring cups aren’t so precise anyway but if you take one cup water to be 236g, one cup flour as 120g and one teaspoon salt to be 5g that’s very close.
Thank you for your suggestions.
On a whim I made the “Egg Bread” listed in the instructional booklet that came with the bread machine.
List of the ingredients were:
3/4 cup+1 Tbsp milk 80 degrees (I used half and half)
2 large eggs
2 Tbsp butter (I only had about 1 Tbsp which I used)
3 1/4 cup bread flour (I used King Arthur AP bought from Costco)
1 1/2 Tbsp sugar
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp dried yeast (bought from Costco Red Star brand)
I broke the eggs into half and half and beat them with mixer to thoroughly mix, added the butter, warmed to about 90 degrees. Measured the flour, sugar, salt and yeast. Greased the bread pan with some olive oil. Poured the wet ingredients into the bread pan, then added the dry ingredients. Started the bread machine, and set it to sweet bread medium crust (could not move the setting from medium so I think for sweet bread it only can be set to medium perhaps). After some minutes I scraped the bread pan with a silicon spatula and then let the machine do the rest. The following morning this was the result:
Other than being uneven it seems has a good texture. What can be done to make it even next time?
How does it look to you? Any tips that you think would improve the results next time? The process of making it was simple and I think this is a good bread machine. The bread came out of the pan easy and fell out with out any issues. I did not have to scrap the sides to make it fall out.
Thank you for your inputs.
I’ve downloaded the manual but I don’t see an Egg Bread recipe. Not sure which recipe you’re following but I doubt it came from the manual. Don’t know why it came out like it did but with a bread machine following a recipe that comes with the manual will ensure greater success. Having said that your loaf does look like it has a nice crumb.
Looking through the recipes I think starting off simple would be best and the Old Fashioned White Bread or French Bread looks like a good place to start…
I am thinking the reason the bread came out uneven is because I did not follow the manual direction of pushing some of the flour to the corners and make a well in the center and put the yeast in that well. Maybe if I had done that then the bread would have come out even.
That’s interesting! I downloaded the manual and it doesn’t appear in there. Could be an earlier or later addition. It might be because of how you loaded the ingredients into the pan. Bread machine recipes are very specific and in order for the dough hooks to knead properly the method is important. So measuring as accurately as possible and loading the ingredients into the pan as suggested will all help. Also make sure you choose the correct setting.
How about dissolve the salt in the water. Add all the liquid ingredients first. Mix a bit. Sprinkle the flour evenly over the liquid. Make a little well in the flour and add the yeast. Choose the cycle.
Or mix all the liquid ingredients at the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle the flour over the liquid. Make two small wells in the flour at opposite sides. In one carefully add the yeast and in the other the salt.
I made a sourdough loaf with the bread machine yesterday. It came out fine, but like the other loaf it just does not have the quality of the bread I get from a local baker. I attribute that to the dry active yeast. I might even be a little allergic to this yeast as it seems to make me feel a little on the uneasy side. I want to see if I can eliminate it altogether by using more of the sourdough starter.
When I tried to make bread by hand using sourdough starter I read about it and one website suggested that the sourdough starter needs to be the consistency of peanut butter. I made the sourdough starter back then using that recipe but the result was not very satisfactory although I did eat some of that bread so it was edible.
My new plan with the bread machine is to use the thin sourdough starter that I often end up with as the ONLY hydration for the bread and eliminate any pure water from the recipe. Then use the dough cycle of the machine up to 3 times if necessary and after each dough cycle to see how the loaf has risen and if additional sourdough starter or flour could help with the rise and the dough shape. Eventually get an idea of the ideal sourdough and flour mixture ratio. Also eliminate the salt at this stage and only after the dough has risen sufficiently to add salt at the final stage when the dough is mixed before baked.
Does anyone thinks this procedure might work? Any additional suggestion on how to go about this?
Here is the picture of the sourdough bread that was made yesterday.
I do not know anything about bread machines. Your questions are intriguing. I did a search for “making sourdough in a bread machine” and a bunch of websites specific to you quest popped up. You might take a quick look at King Arthur’s recipe for bread machine sourdough. They note it takes a larger amount of starter. Other people making this kind of bread with their machines also added helpful comments.
