Bread Machine Baking Tips:Try These The Next Time You Bake Bread

If you are tired of making the same old recipes over and over,or you simply want to be more adventurous,try some of these bread machine baking tips. Let the experimenting begin!

Consistency of the Dough

Having dough with the proper consistency is key to making great bread. The dough should be soft and smooth to the touch. It definitely shouldn’t be sticky,tacky or moist. Neither should the dough be dry and crumbly. The dough needs to have an elastic, resilient quality to it so that when you push on it the dough tries to go back to it’s original shape.

Try Out Different Ingredients

Trying out different ingredients in your basic bread machine recipes is a great place to start experimenting. The key is to substitute one thing at a time. An example would be to replace some of the wheat flour with another kind like rye for instance. You could also switch some of the liquids for others. You could use milk instead of water as an example.

A rule of thumb would be to swap dry ingredient for dry ingredient and wet for wet. You can switch a wet ingredient like fresh milk for dry milk, just remember to reduce the amount of water an equal amount to compensate.

You might want to simply add some additional items like spices or herbs to add more flavor to existing recipes. Many people like to add in cheese to their bread recipes. This is a great idea, just remember to reduce the amount of liquid as the cheese would be considered a wet ingredient.

Try a Manual Recipe

You can make bread recipes that are meant to be made by hand in a bread machine. You will need to adjust the amount of ingredients though.

The first step is to look how much there is of each ingredient. How many cups of flour does the recipe call for?  How much liquid? Once that is determined, adjust the amounts so that you don’t overfill your bread maker . You don’t want to make a mess, just good bread!

Most manual bread recipes will usually make two loaves about 9×5 inches. In general, you should be able to divide the amount of ingredients in half so that instead of two 9×5 loaves you end up with one 1 1/2 pound loaf.

For different sizes try these base measurements

* For a one pound loaf use about 7/8 cup of liquids and 2 3/4 cups of flour

* For a one and a half pound loaf of bread try using approximately 1 cup of liquid and 3 cups of flour

* And for a 2 pound loaf use 1 1/3 cup of liquids with 4 cups of flour

Check the consistency of your dough as you mix it. It needs to be sticky but not wet. Add in additional flour or liquids as you go until you get the proper consistency.

With time, patience and practice you can come up with some great variations on existing automatic bread maker recipes that you and your family will love.

 

Filed under: Bread Making Tips

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