I can't get my bread machine to turn out a decent loaf, any help appreciated!

Swan_2

Long_tall_sally wrote: »

Would someone mind posting a wholemeal loaf recipe please? I don't use my bread maker anymore because I lost the recipe book that came with it. I don't know what make it is, other than it has a "You are what you eat sticker on it".

Many thanks

I have to go out, but if no-one else has done it by the time I get back, I'll put up links for the Kenwood & Panasonic recipes for you

angeltreats wrote: »

Good luck, hope it works better this time

I have a Rachel Allen breadmaker, it's been sitting in the garage for ages as I've been doing it by hand which I prefer, but I've dug it back out again because due to my silly working hours I don't always have time and DH can happily chuck the ingredients in there himself. I have to say, the instruction book that came with it is absolutely lovely. One of the nicest I've seen with any appliance. I'm surprised at Kenwood though. They've always given such lovely little cookbooks with the Kenwood Chef and my Kenwood food processor came with a great booklet too. You'd think they'd have gone to the same effort for their breadmaker

I'm surprised at Kenwood too, the machine itself is beautiful & efficient, but they give you a glossy book with the recipes in & a flimsy leaflet type thing with all the important instructions, & it's not well laid out or written either

xrjtg wrote: »

I'm not familiar with the machine, but my usual remedy for bread problems (not always successful!) is tinkering with the water content. 70% hydration (70ml of water per 100g of flour) has always made a good malty loaf for me. Add a teaspoon each of salt and yeast for a simple recipe.

that's the trouble with breadmakers, you don't have the control over your ingredients that you do with handmade

with handmade you can feel when you need a little more water or flour & make adjustmets, similarly with the proving times

I always have a look & check the consistency of the dough as even atmospheric conditions can affect the correct four/liquid ratio

'tis a dark art at times

Swan_2

dfw844 wrote: »

Ha ha, DH just came in

'You do know you didn't put the paddle in the bread machine?'.

Perhaps I'm just not destined to do well with a breadmaker!

nooooooo! :rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

I think we've all done that at least once :A

Swan_2

hi Long tall sally, here are some links

Kenwood recipes

Panasonic recipes

Morphy Richards one manual of about a dozen on their site, I think this is their newest one

Carrs a flour manufacturer's site with some really interesting recipes including Wholemeal for various different machines (not the latest models though) which shows how different machines like different proportions of ingredients


if you can remember whether your machine likes the water in first or the dry ingredients first that would be useful & you may need to do a bit of tweaking till you get something that suits

I have to say that I've used 3 different top of the range breadmakers, but they've never produced wholemeal bread as good as handmade. I'm just about to try out some fancy Canadian wholemeal flour I got from The Flourbin, so we'll see how that goes

good luck

dfw844

Well, the loaf turned out much better on the rapid setting! Thanks so much to everyone for suggesting this. I also seperated out the salt and yeast.

It's the first loaf I've done that has the nice domed top, so we are definitely making good progress! I wish I'd asked you lot a couple of months ago.

I am definitely going to keep trying! I think as someone suggested the key might be the amount of liquid, so I shall try the usual long setting with less liquid in as well.

And thanks to Swan for posting the links to recipes, I shall enjoy looking through those!

Gloomendoom

With one or two exceptions, we've always had poor results with our bread machine. It always seemed to turn out very dense loaves.

A couple of weeks ago my wife's sister came to stay and made a couple of loaves by hand using exactly the same ingredients as we had been using in the bread machine. They turned out perfectly... just like 'real' loaves!

The bread machine has now been retired to the cupboard that houses all the other "looked like a good idea at the time" machines.

dfw844

Gloomendoom wrote: »

With one or two exceptions, we've always had poor results with our bread machine. It always seemed to turn out very dense loaves.

A couple of weeks ago my wife's sister came to stay and made a couple of loaves by hand using exactly the same ingredients as we had been using in the bread machine. They turned out perfectly... just like 'real' loaves!

The bread machine has now been retired to the cupboard that houses all the other "looked like a good idea at the time" machines.

Try altering the amount of liquid you are using. Look at me, giving advice now!

And if you really aren't going to use it - put it on ebay. They sell well and it will give someone else the chance to try it out.

Swan_2

Gloomendoom wrote: »

With one or two exceptions, we've always had poor results with our bread machine. It always seemed to turn out very dense loaves.

A couple of weeks ago my wife's sister came to stay and made a couple of loaves by hand using exactly the same ingredients as we had been using in the bread machine. They turned out perfectly... just like 'real' loaves!

The bread machine has now been retired to the cupboard that houses all the other "looked like a good idea at the time" machines.

what make/model is it? ... some brands of machine seem to be incapable of turning out a decent loat

the first one I ever used, a Morphy Richards Fastbake (given by a friend who was getting rid of it) turned out edible but 'cakey' loafs, the texture was completely wrong, & no amount of tweaking solved its problems to my satisfaction, tbh I was glad when it finally gave up the ghost

Badrick

I've had better results using Panasonic recipes. I've also found if you sprinkle the flour in BM instead of just tipping it in, the loaves rise better and seem lighter.

Also owned a Morphy Richards Fastbake, it was more of a lead machine.

Finefoot

Oh, I have a Morphy Richards, and I must say it s been great. I even made cinnamon buns on the dough setting, and they turned out very well, they looked professionally made!

Icey77

I have a kidnapped Panasonic which uses the dry then wet ingredients approach.

One thing, do you use milk powder? My receipe book states 2 tablespoons of skimmed milk powder. I think it makes the bread much lighter.

I've yet to have a bad loaf from the panasonic, albeit I've only tried white and granary on standard 4 hour or fast 3 hour timings. I've used the timer as well and no problems.

Good luck!