Breadmaking - recipes, hints, tips, questions

yraunaj

who sells dove farm yeast.

billieboy_2

Waitrose sells Dove's Farm yeast.

kah22

Resurrected my old breadmaker recently and began baking.

To date I've only used the Lidl pre mix but now I'm a sort of used to the machine I want to move on. Today I was walking around Sainsbury's looking at their range of flour and noticed their Basic range was a hell of a lot cheaper than leading brand names. As far as breadmakers are concerned is one as good as the other? Is there any difference at all?

[Deleted User]

kah22 wrote: »

Resurrected my old breadmaker recently and began baking.
To date I've only used the Lidl pre mix but now I'm a sort of used to the machine I want to move on. Today I was walking around Sainsbury's looking at their range of flour and noticed their Basic range was a hell of a lot cheaper than leading brand names. As far as breadmakers are concerned is one as good as the other? Is there any difference at all?

There is a big difference in types of flour. For breadmaking you should use strong bread flour for best results. The Basics range tends to be just plain flour which doesn't have enough gluten in for breadmaking. You could find it a false economy.

I use either Sains/Tesco/Asda strong bread flour and they all give consistently good results.

Have a look HERE for an explanation of different kinds of flour.

kah22

Great Reply Waggle Dancer. I never knew that site existed, I'll certainly bookmark it.

halojones

I didnt know there was so much difference in the flours....wow.

All I need now is a bread maker, to go with my slow cooker.

Victoria_Meldrew

Just bought and tried my new breadmaker - not a bad first attempt although the top (end) sank in so not sure why. Can anyone recommend which yeast to use and where they buy it? The only one at Asda that said it was suitable for breadmakers was much more expensive than the others which just seemed to be for hand baking.

kah22

I'd been trying the Lidl pre-mix but no matter what I did it wouldn't come right for me, come about 20 minutes until the end and it sank in the middle. I reduced water a bit at a time but still it collapsed and then I got one of those Ah-Ha moments

Here's what I did. I followed the wholemeal recipe from my breadmaker's manual and worked according to it as far as water and flour were concerned. Then I cut all the rest of the measurements by about half e.g. instead of adding 1 1/2 tbs of dried milk I added 1 tbs. I added no yeast as it is already in the mix.

The result is I got a perfectly shaped load, no sinking in the middle, I've had success now on four successive occasions so it seems to work, the only think I'd like to improve on would be to have the crust a bit firmer.

If you are having trouble with Lidl pre-mix or any other pre-mix try the above tactic and let us know the results.

Kevin

northwest1965

halojones wrote: »

I didnt know there was so much difference in the flours....wow.

All I need now is a bread maker, to go with my slow cooker.

Have you tried making it by hand? I am really new to breadmaking, but find it is so easy. I was really shocked that you can even prove it in the fridge.

flutterbyuk25

I have had my parents old BM for about 5 weeks, I've made 5 loaves so far and they have all up til now been a tad stodgy but still edible.

However I made a loaf last night (I use the timer option as I'm on Economy7) and it is blooming amazing. It tastes like proper bread, it's light and fluffy and so yummy :j

The only difference in this batch to the other 4 is that I used Morrisons strong white bread flour (all other were with Tesco's strong white bread flour) and I used real butter not low fat margerine (which was all I had in fridge last few times).

Does anyone know if it was the real butter that would make the loaf better, or could it be the flour?

I don't normally have real butter in the house cos i'll eat it! But if it makes my bread this yummy then I guess I'll have to

TIA

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