Bread Machine Magic (3 page)

M
EASURING
I
NGREDIENTS

• It's very important to use accurate and proper measuring equipment and techniques. Sometimes as little as 1 tablespoon liquid can make the difference between a great bread and a not-so-great one. Use a dry measuring cup for your flours and grains. They normally come nested in ¼-,
¹
⁄
₃
-, ½-, and 1-cup sizes.
Avoid using the measuring cup as a scooper!
This has been the cause of many a short, heavy loaf. To measure your dry ingredients properly, gently spoon them into the cup (do not pack them down with the back of the spoon or tap the side of the cup to settle them), and then level them with a straight-edged knife or spatula. Why be a spooner rather than a scooper? Because, when dipping down into your canister or bag of flour with the measuring cup, you can pack in at least 1 extra tablespoon of flour
per cup,
enough to make a big difference in your final product.

• Use a clear plastic or glass liquid measuring cup for your liquids; set the cup on a flat surface and check the measurement at eye level.

• When a recipe calls for more than 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, cut it into smaller pieces to ensure that it will blend well with the other ingredients.

• If a recipe calls for both oil and honey, measure the oil first. The honey or molasses will then slide easily out of the tablespoon.

• To make use of the last few drops of honey or molasses that coat the sides of the jar, remove the lid and place the jar in the microwave on High for 10 to 15 seconds. It will then pour easily into your measuring spoon.

• Any ingredients that are heated or cooked on the stove should be allowed to cool to room temperature before you add them to the rest of the ingredients; otherwise, they will kill the yeast. We suggest, too, that you add the ingredients to the bread pan in the order listed, adding the yeast last. Avoid adding yeast directly on top of the salt or vice versa. The two don't mix.

T
IPS
FOR
H
IGH
-A
LTITUDE
B
AKERS

• Try any or all of the following suggestions if your breads rise too quickly and deflate when baked due to lower pressure at high altitudes: Reduce the amount of yeast by about one-third, increase the salt by 25%, and add ½ to 1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten per cup of flour. If all else fails, try baking your bread on the Rapid Bake cycle.

S
TORAGE

• Store all whole-grain flours, bran, cracked wheat, bulgur, wheat germ, and nuts in sealed containers in the freezer or refrigerator to prevent them from turning rancid. They all contain natural oils and do not have a long shelf life.

• If you plan to bake bread several times a week, make it as convenient for yourself as possible. We fill our canister sets with bread flour, sugar, nonfat dry milk powder, and oats. In the cupboard overhead we have containers of salt, honey, molasses, brown sugar, instant potato flakes, raisins, cornmeal, baking soda, herbs, and spices. With that arrangement, it's possible to toss together all the ingredients for a loaf of bread in just 5 minutes.

• If you like to bake a wide variety of breads, we suggest having these ingredients on hand:

FLOURS: Bread, all-purpose (unbleached or regular), whole wheat, rye, barley, buckwheat, millet

LIQUIDS: Milk or nonfat dry milk powder, buttermilk or dry buttermilk powder

WHOLE GRAINS: Oats, wheat bran, wheat germ, cracked wheat or bulgur, millet

SWEETENERS: Granulated sugar, dark and light brown sugar, confectioners' sugar, honey, molasses

FATS: Margarine or unsalted butter, vegetable and olive oil, shortening

MISCELLANEOUS: Yeast, salt, instant potato flakes, eggs, sour cream, sunflower seeds, oranges, raisins, imported Parmesan cheese, various herbs and spices

• Once a loaf is done, remove it from the bread pan as soon as possible. Even with the Cool Down and Keep Warm cycles, bread left to sit in the pan too long will turn damp and soggy on the outside.

• Baked bread and rolls, if allowed to cool completely and wrapped well in plastic, foil, or plastic bags, can be frozen satisfactorily for 1 month. It's best to slice the bread first for convenience sake. We don't recommend refrigerating bread. Bread stales 6 times faster in the refrigerator than when stored at room temperature.

• In a hurry? No time to bake that dough that just came out of the machine? No problem. You can park most doughs in the refrigerator for 2 or 3 days. Place the dough in an oiled, sealed, plastic bag or bowl. You will need to punch it down each day. When ready to use it, simply take it out of the refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature before shaping it into a loaf or rolls. We do this quite often with pizza dough. Having it handy like that means hot pizza from the oven faster than a delivery boy can get bring one to the door.

T
ROUBLESHOOTING

• Once in a while you'll have loaves that turn out like miniboulders rather than anything edible. Did you check the dough's consistency during kneading? It probably needed a little more liquid. Did you forget to place the blade securely on the post? Did you forget to add yeast? Did you scoop your flour out with a measuring cup rather than spooning it into the cup? Toss the loaf out (be careful you don't hit anyone with it!) and try again.

• Too much liquid in the dough can produce a wide variety of unsightly results. It will usually cause a whole-grain bread to be coarse and full of holes or very small with a flat or sunken top. If you end up with a tall loaf that is spongy-soft with caved-in sides, or a bread that rose too high and mushroomed over the top of the pan, those are also results of dough that was too wet. Don't forget that ingredients such as fruits, vegetables, sour cream, and cottage cheese add moisture to the dough as well.

• If a loaf consistently rises too fast but looks very deflated after it bakes, that means it had too long a rising period or rose too fast. The gluten strands broke, the gas escaped, and the bread fell during baking. You may need to use the Rapid Bake cycle if this happens often. It can also be the result of omitting salt from the recipe. You can reduce the amount of salt in a recipe, but we don't recommend you leave it out altogether.

• Breads that contain whole grains, cheese, eggs, or extra sugar will often bake up very dark or have a burnt crust. You should switch to a Light Crust setting for those breads.

• The weather can play an important part in your bread-baking efforts. Days when the humidity is either very high or very low, the flour's moisture content changes significantly. Professional bakers get around this by weighing their flour, which takes into account how much moisture the flour has absorbed from the atmosphere and gives them consistent results. If you're not keen on weighing your ingredients, simply adjust your wet or dry ingredients slightly to allow for the change in weather. As the dough mixes, add 1 or 2 more tablespoons flour if it's particularly humid outside, or 1 or 2 teaspoons more liquid if it's unusually dry out. Those are the times when it's especially important to pinch the dough as it mixes to make sure it's wet or dry enough.

• We've noticed that in the horizontal bread pans that bake the more traditionally shaped loaf, flour has a tendency to pile up in the corners and not always get mixed in with the rest of the ingredients. If you have one of those pans, it's always a good idea to clear out the corners with a rubber spatula shortly after the initial mixing cycle begins.

M
ISCELLANEOUS

• When using the Delayed Baking cycle on your machine, avoid using any ingredients that might spoil if left out at room temperature for any length of time, such as eggs, milk, sour cream, cottage cheese, and buttermilk. Also, make sure the yeast is not sitting in any liquid once you add it at the end.

• A serrated bread knife is invaluable. Make it your first purchase.

• The second purchase, if you bake free-form breads in the oven quite often, is one of those silicone or Teflon baking sheets. They're reusable and you'll never again have to grease a baking sheet. What a godsend!

• Here's a tip from one who learned the hard way: Remember to remove the mixing blade from that special loaf of bread you've baked as a gift. Once the bread is wrapped and given, it's quite embarrassing to ask for the blade back!

• If you're making rolls or specialty breads and the recipe calls for a baking pan or a cake pan, and all you have is a glass baking dish or pie plate, reduce the oven temperature by 25°F to avoid overbrowning.

• Dark pans will produce dark crusts; shiny pans will produce lighter crusts.

• When making sweet rolls that are rolled up jelly-roll fashion and then sliced, here's a nifty trick. Use dental floss to cut each slice. Lightly mark the roll with a knife where you want to slice it. Starting at one end, slide a 12-inch length of dental floss or heavy thread underneath the roll, and at each mark, bring the ends of the floss up and crisscross them on top. Keep pulling in opposite directions and the floss will cut right through the roll with ease.

• When you find your freezer half full of bags containing that one last slice of bread no one will kill off, what do you do with all those odds and ends? First, know that you will never again have to buy bread crumbs. A quick whirl in the food processor will turn those orphan slices into the most delicious bread crumbs imaginable! With not much more effort, you can create some delicious croutons that will make your salads sparkle. (See our recipes for
croutons
.) Bread pudding, stuffing, and French toast made with many of the breads in this cookbook will leave the realm of ordinary and achieve memorable status. If you're overworked, stressed out, and too busy to create something with those stray slices, dump them into a bag, visit your own backyard or the nearest park, and take a few quiet moments to feed your neighborhood birds, ducks, or squirrels. Your day will be brighter for it.

• Last and most important, have fun with this fabulous appliance! Experiment with new shapes and taste sensations. You can turn a plain dough into a masterpiece by braiding it, brushing it with egg white, and sprinkling poppyseeds or sesame seeds on top. How about sculpting a bread basket simply by twining ropes of bread dough around the outside of an inverted, greased bowl? After baking, remove the bowl and you have a lovely basket for your homemade rolls. You can do something similar by creating a cornucopia shape from wadded-up aluminum foil. It's the perfect centerpiece for Thanksgiving when filled with fresh homemade rolls or dried flowers and other seasonal decor. If you're not feeling quite that inspired, have fun just shaping small, individual bread bowls the next time you serve chili or stew to family or friends. One large, round loaf hollowed out and toasted in a 350°F oven is a tasty container for your favorite dip or fondue. Experiment with various cooking containers such as coffee cans and clay flowerpots. See how much fun you can have when you unleash your creative instincts! Who knows, you might come up with a bake-off winner or a blue ribbon at a state fair. Happy baking!

A
BOUT
O
UR
R
ECIPES

Our recipes are listed as “small, medium, large.” The small is the 1-pound loaf that contains approximately 2 cups flour. The medium is the 1½-pound loaf that uses about 3 cups of flour. The large is the 2-pound loaf that calls for approximately 4 cups flour.

When trying a recipe for the first time, we suggest starting with the medium size first. Not all 2-pound loaf pans are created equal and you want to avoid overflows whenever possible. If it didn't quite fill up the pan, you know you're safe to try the larger loaf.

In some of our recipes, we list vital wheat gluten as an optional ingredient. We include it because results sometimes varied greatly from one machine to the next. If some machines produced loaves that just needed a little more “oomph” than others, the gluten helped. We recommend trying the recipe first without the gluten. If it doesn't rise high enough or needs more body, cross out the word “optional,” so you'll know next time to add the gluten.

You may notice that some recipes require all-purpose flour for one size loaf and bread flour for the other sizes or vice versa. We had to switch to all-purpose flour in some instances because the bread rose too high using bread flour.

All eggs used in these recipes are the large-size eggs.

When a recipe lists beer as an ingredient, either use flat beer or pour off the foamy head before measuring.

We list liquid amounts with a 2-tablespoon range in quantity to allow for the variances among machines. You'll soon learn whether your machine produces better loaves using the lower or higher amount of liquid. Again, and we can't stress it enough, it pays to check the dough as it mixes.

We used Red Star brand active dry yeast when testing all the recipes in this book. If you choose to use other brands, we suggest you experiment a little first because not all yeasts are created equal. With some you may need to use ½ to 1 teaspoon more than called for in the recipe; for others you might be able to use a little less.

Don't overlook the “blurbs” at the beginning of each recipe. We often used them to note or emphasize an important step or ingredient.

We have included nutritional analysis at the end of each recipe to be used as a general guideline. The information was calculated on an average medium loaf containing fourteen ½-inch-thick slices of bread.

All of our recipes can be baked in the oven instead of in the bread machine. For those who want to work the dough with their hands and bake a more traditional loaf, we suggest you place the ingredients in the bread pan and set the machine on Dough. When it beeps that it's done, turn the dough out onto a floured countertop and knead it for 1 or 2 minutes. Place the large loaf in two greased 8½ × 4½ × 2½-inch loaf pans. Place the medium loaf in a greased 9 × 5 × 3-inch loaf pan. Place the small loaf in a greased 8½ × 4½ × 2½-inch loaf pan. (Or in the case of a free-form bread, shape the dough as desired and place on a greased baking sheet.) Cover dough with a dish towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 30 to 45 minutes.