basic bread recipe in breadmaker! help!!!

Swan_2

santer wrote: »

The first loaves were brilliant, beginners luck maybe, and haven't noticed a deviation from how I started off, with the exception of the olive oil which I got when it was going for half price

the olive oil should be ok, I mix & match various fats & oils in my 255 & the bread's been fine

have you tried making a bog standard basic loaf to see how that turns out?

santer_2

Not yet, will do when this one is used

Swan_2

santer wrote: »

Not yet, will do when this one is used

good idea I think a process of elimination is the way froward

please keep us posted about how it goes

santer_2

So, made a loaf, reduced the water to 60ml per 100 grams of flour and used butter instead of olive oil. Forgot to remove it when finished and went out, on my return, it had risen correctly.

I hope this is due to the reduction in water from the 68ml per 100 grams used in a recipe book I got as part of buying the Panasonic

Kilty_2

Cursing my breadmaker at the moment - been using the recipe that came with it which is

3 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp oil
3 tbsp milk powder (I usually just stick in fresh milk though)
350ml water
2 tsp yeast

For a 1.5lb loaf, on the basic (3h) programme. It's a Cookworks Signature breadmaker, the one that Argos are currently clearing stock of @ £20.

Order of ingredents as per instructions: water, oil, milk, sugar, flour, salt around the sides of the pan and yeast in a little hollow in the middle of the flour

First loaf was perfect
Second not bad but collapsed at the top a bit

Since then they've all seemed to collapse at the top and the latest didn't rise nearly as much as normal.

Tried a different recipe from this book which didn't use sugar, oil, milk and less yeast. It was AWFUL.

:wall:

squeaky

According to the troubleshooting section of my Hovis Breadmaking book...

Too much water... reduce by one tablespoon

You forgot the salt

Too much sugar


Given the sensitivity of a breadmaker program (because it works on time) to changes in ingredients, especially the gluten content of flour for example, I'd be inclined to add a bit less water. It's not just the gluten content either - flour is hydroscopic (it absorbs water from the atmosphere) so in hot dry summers you may need more water in the recipe, and in cooler damper winters you may need a bit less. A change of just one tablespoon either way can make a lot of difference.

Kilty_2

Hmmm - perhaps I'm not being accurate enough with the "cups" - how many grams is a cup?

squeaky

A cup of flour weighs less than a cup of sugar (or salt). That's why these recipes use volume instead of weight!

Honestly - completely fill, even overfill, the cup and then scrape the top to level. Do this for each ingredient in the recipe and it WILL work.

Kilty_2

It worked the first time, it was perhaps as I started running out of flour the cups got smaller :rotfl:

Thank you.

squeaky

Next time you meet that problem - just use a smaller cup. For everything - though, not just what you are running short of.