I have been craving fresh baked bread so I bought a package mix a few weeks ago and went to put it in the machine and it said to put the ingredients in in the order your machine recommends. I didn’t remember and looked for the book that came with the machine and didn’t find it so I winged it and of course I was wrong and it didn’t rise right. It did rise a little but it just wasn’t good. I did find my bread machine instructions afterwards, of course.
Still craving bread I recently bought a jar of rapid rise yeast for bread machines and some bread flour. I went to make some last night and discovered most of the recipes called for dry milk which I did not have so I picked a recipe for Italian herb bread which used no milk. It does use olive oil. I got a huge loaf of bread that I will be eating for a while, it has a nice crust which I wonder if it’s due to the olive oil. It’s not very herby but that’s not a problem, I probably just needed fresher herbs. I now need a good thick stew to eat with it but I hadn’t planned for that. I toasted a piece for breakfast this morning and about an inch or more stuck out over the top, I had to turn it around to toast that bit.
Anyway, I now have a jar or yeast that is supposed to be used in 6 months. There are some recipes in my manual but none look very exciting. I can always pick up some dry milk later to make them but I wanted to see if you guys have any tried and true bread machine recipes. I’d especially like some whole grain recipes.
By the way, I have made bread the old fashioned way before but I can’t do that now because my oven is not working right and the temperature goes all wonky. If you have any recipes that require just making the dough in the machine and then making something else with it and baking it in the oven, I can’t do that, unless it would work in a toaster oven. You’re still welcome to post the recipe, someone else may be able to use it.
I’ve been making these breads for my husband to use in his lunch sandwiches. Of all the loaves I’ve made (I’ve made others that were like bricks so I didn’t mention those) he raved about the pignoli bread. I’ve also used that same recipe but subbed in other seeds like sesame, pepitas, sunflower, poppy, etc. Just use the same measure of seeds as you would pignolis.
Edit: I missed the part about whole grains. So far, I’ve had pretty poor luck with anything that uses mostly whole wheat. They come out so dense and horrible, I have to figure out what I’m doing wrong. You’ll find some recipes in that link, but I haven’t tried too many of them yet. I want to, but the few whole wheat ones I’ve tried have been…a challenge.
I’ve had a fair amount of luck simply reverse-engineering ordinary bread recipes from cookbooks for bread machine use; just put in the liquid and fat first, then pile the other ingredients on top and start the machine.
I’ve used a bread machine for years, but mostly I just throw in ingredients and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, the bird feeder gets an extra helping that day.
I like to put in just a little (1/3 cup) of rye flour and a little less corn meal to a basic white bread recipie. Too much of either keeps it from rising, but just a little makes a nice flavor.