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Bread Machines..

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Earlier this year I bought a bread machine.  Nothing special, just a cheapo £30 job from Argos I think it was.  It’s pretty basic, all ingredients are dumped into the baking/mixing pot and that’s that.   There were 2 reasons for getting a bread machine, 1) to make better bread then I could buy (better for you, less rubbish put in) and 2) try to save some money by making our own.  I’d found that while I could buy a decent loaf of bread for about 80p-£1 with 25 or 30 slices in it, we were chucking out 1/2 to 1/3 of a loaf as it would go bad before we could finish it.   Since getting a bread machine we’ve tossed out a mouldy loaf only twice in about 8 months.

So, how do I make my bread?   Well, like anyone that gets a machine for a first time I went through some pretty bad attempts. 

This was one of the failures.  I had 4 previous failures to this one, some ended up like this, others ended up with severe muffin tops.

When I got the machine I’d tried the recipes that came in the book with the machine.  A couple worked fine some failed.  I Googled about and found THIS RECIPE.

That worked fine exactly as it is, but the loaf was “small” not filling the machine, so I tinkered with it.  Slowly increasing things until I got the sized loaf I wanted and that work.

 

So, now my standard recipe  is:

 

500g of Flour (See notes below)

300ml water

2 teaspoons Yeast  (an easy bake sort of yeast for bread machines)

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 tablespoons sugar (I’ve used both castor and normal sugar, normal is cheaper and works 100%)

4 tablespoons of powered milk mix (dry)

4 tablespoons of oil (See notes below)

Optional – add some seeds (See notes below)

Set machine to “Light” loaf and Go..

 

Notes:

Flour – I normally use a mix of flours (250g of each).  The primary flour is Allinson Strong White Bread Flour, then I’ll add something else to it, such as whole wheat or a seeded flour mix, or just 500g of the white.

Oil – Normally I use Olive Oil, I found it just adds a bit of flour over Veg oil.  I’ve also used Walnut oil and Peanut oil.  Both add a nice flavour, and smell to the bread

Optional – If I don’t use a seeded flour I’ll add additional seeds to the mix myself.  One of my favourite seed mixes is the Tesco Wholefoods 4 Seed Mix, I’ll add 100g of these seeds to mix, very tasty.  I’ve also used 80g of Tesco Wholefoods Brown Linseeds. Or just use Sesame seeds, 80g.

 

Since using the above I’ve only had 1 failure and I believe it may have been to “dead yeast” .. I chucked out the rest of the tin (not much left) and use a new package and it worked fine.

What is you’re favourite Bread Machine recipe?

3 thoughts on “Bread Machines..”

  1. Cool! I really appreciate on what you are doing. Like your bread machine and wanna by it soon for make some loaf as like you. Thanks dude 🙂

  2. What size loaf does that recipe make?

    We’ve got a Black and Decker bread machine that make 2, 2.5, & 3 lb loaves.
    We normally make a 3 lb loaf.

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