Best recipes for a bread machine

Shannon88

Shannon88

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My SO got us an awesome little bread machine recently. Whilst I have gotten my paws on quite a few recipes already, I was just wondering if any of you have any "go to" recipes I should try?
 
Which model did you get - we have had the go to Panasonic for years and it still sets the benchmark.
 
Shannon88 said:
Bread maker/Bread machine... AKA, Mini oven on steroids I suppose :)
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It's like a mini oven with a dough hook inside it. You put in the ingredients and it mixes and bakes and 3 hours later you get bread.

Edit: oops, I see you are actually OP so you clearly know what it is ;-)

My mom had a machine like that while I was in high school, she basically only used the recipes that came in the booklet, IIRC it was a Sunbeam. My favourite was the cinnamon-raisin one, but I don't believe that she saved the booklet so I can't provide the actual recipe for you.

Ours had the functionality that you could set things up at night, set the timer and then wake up the next morning to fresh bread. It was great.

It tasted tons better than store-bought bread, but now that I know a bit more about bread-making, I prefer sourdough, which you have to do by hand, bread-makers can't do it because they need commercial yeast.

My pro tip: try to get a whole-wheat recipe that you like, because if you just make white bread, it tastes almost like cake, so you end up eating too much and getting fat. Whole-wheat makes you feel satisfied sooner as a disincentive for eating too much.
 
We've had a Russell Hobbs for the last 6 years, inherited from our emigrating daughter. I'd start with one of the recipes from the manual and later on you can start experimenting. Ours has settings for lightness of crust (we use light otherwise it's a bit crusty) and size of loaf (ours has 3 weights for the loaf we make most often).
 
Marsie27 said:
We've had a Russell Hobbs for the last 6 years, inherited from our emigrating daughter. I'd start with one of the recipes from the manual and later on you can start experimenting. Ours has settings for lightness of crust (we use light otherwise it's a bit crusty) and size of loaf (ours has 3 weights for the loaf we make most often).
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Ours also has the setting for the lightness of the crust. Will set it on light for the first loaf and see what happens.
 
Shannon88 said:
Ours also has the setting for the lightness of the crust. Will set it on light for the first loaf and see what happens.
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Suggest medium for first test. Also - look for the basic recipe that has butter in it and use that as your first one.

If you cannot find a recipe like that - here is one for a large loaf that works well. Pu the ingredients into the machine in the order I list them below.

1 and a 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast
450gr white bread flower (suggest Eureka Mills)
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons milk powder
2 tablespoons butter
320ml filtered water

Set for basic loaf, large size and medium crust. Think the baking cycle for this one is around 4 hours.
 
BartSimpson said:
Suggest medium for first test. Also - look for the basic recipe that has butter in it and use that as your first one.

If you cannot find a recipe like that - here is one for a large loaf that works well. Pu the ingredients into the machine in the order I list them below.

1 and a 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast
450gr white bread flower (suggest Eureka Mills)
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons milk powder
2 tablespoons butter
320ml filtered water

Set for basic loaf, large size and medium crust. Think the baking cycle for this one is around 4 hours.
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Thank you so much! Will give it a whirl on the weekend :)
 
The addition of butter / oil IIRC prevents the bread from going stale too quickly. Sugar is for activating the yeast, it needs to work quickly in order to let the bread rise within the 3-hour programme, it's not enough time for the yeast to actually break down the starch in the flour.

w.r.t. the water - tap water will probably work fine, but the chlorination isn't great for the yeast. I use spring water when I bake.

IIRC, when we used a bread machine, I always put light crust. YMMV, I guess this is a matter of personal preference.
 
newby_investor said:
The addition of butter / oil IIRC prevents the bread from going stale too quickly. Sugar is for activating the yeast, it needs to work quickly in order to let the bread rise within the 3-hour programme, it's not enough time for the yeast to actually break down the starch in the flour.

w.r.t. the water - tap water will probably work fine, but the chlorination isn't great for the yeast. I use spring water when I bake.

IIRC, when we used a bread machine, I always put light crust. YMMV, I guess this is a matter of personal preference.
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Thank you for all the advice. I think this is going to boil down to a case of trial and error, to see what works best with our machine.
 
Shannon88 said:
Thank you for all the advice. I think this is going to boil down to a case of trial and error, to see what works best with our machine.
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Fortunately with bread, it is pretty hard to get it so wrong that it's inedible.

Whatever you make, it'll turn out tasty, and you can just tweak to improve.
 
What happened to the days of ouma making bread using the bare necessities.
Adding machine to bread is just wrong imo.
 
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