Breadmaking - recipes, hints, tips, questions

My Breville BM said to put liquid in first followed by the dry ingredients, keeping the yeast away from the salt, but my Panasonic is the opposite way round and yeast goes in first, followed by flour, then the other dry ingredients with water last. I use either butter or oil, depending what I've got in plentiful supply, and both seem to be ok.

Good luck with the next one if you've already started it

Arghh! What a disaster.

I tried it again, making sure the yeast was completely separate from the sugar and salt, and it's just got too wet again at the dough stage, i.e. there was no dough, just a gloopy mess.

There must be something wrong with my scales as the flour is 1.5kg and the recipe asks for 500g. I calculate 2 loaves to be 1kg, but there's not much flour left and the battery is flashing up as Lo on the scales. But that would make it too dry rather than too wet, surely - unless there's also something wrong with my measuring jug.

I'm not going to have another go tonight. Misterholic has gone to get bread on his way back from the tip (or dumpy, as they call it oop here). But I will get the battery changed on the scales (or get new scales!) and I will try again before reverting back to the readymix - but this time, wet stuff first.

And I'll also get that search party out for the manual.

At least the potato, swede and carrot mash turned out well with enough for another day too.

Magentasue wrote:

Oh dear. Can you not add some more flour to make it into a dough?

I probably could, but I'd have to interrupt the program on the machine - can we do that? - and probably either start it again or knead it myself.

Magentasue wrote:

I'm not sure if I've got this right - you're using 250g of flour?

The recipe on the back of the 1.5kg Hovis flour says:

500g Hovis strong white bread flour
25g butter
1.5 tsp salt
1.25 tsp fast action Hovis bread yeast
350ml warm water
2 tsp sugar (opt)

However, I've tried (and failed!) to make 2 loaves today out of that 1.5kg of flour but there's less than 500g flour left, which makes me think the battery on my (digital) scales flashing "Lo" is causing it to mis-weigh.

The "bread machine" recipe says to put the ingredients in the machine in the order listed above but to keep the yeast away from the salt and sugar.

The first time I made it this afternoon, it looked and smelled lovely with a great soft crust, but once cut into, it was still moist inside. The last time this happened I'd put too much water in (to the readymix).

The second time I made it this evening, it was just the gloopy, watery mess.

Magentasue wrote:

As I said, I use 600g flour and about 380ml water (using my scientific method of 400ml and tip a bit away). I weighed out 600g and then measured it in cups, it was exactly four.

And do you use fresh yeast or dried yeast?

Magentasue wrote:

My instruction book insists you mustn't use the cup to measure the flour but I do.

Mine came with a little plastic pot. I never thought of using it to weigh out the flour. I also have proper cups for measuring.

Magentasue wrote:

What make of breadmaker is it?

It's a Goodmans.

To check your scales, take an unopened pack of pasta or something that has very light packaging.

No need to open it - just pop it on the scales. If they read to within just a few grams of the weight listed on the packet - then they're fine. If they don't - then there's either a fault or, as is most likely in your case, the battery is low.

That didn't take very long at all - found it a while back and started to post, then the pc crashed!

It's a liquids first machine (sorry moggins), so I'm going to put Harry Potter away and read it.