I am in love with my Panasonic breadmaker

deebee

I have a slow cooker and a panny - I do use the slow cooker once a week or so, but I genuinely haven't bought bread since I got my Panny 4 weeks ago - my previous breadmaker was nowhere near as good, and I was sceptical about what I read on here, but this is a seriously good piece of kit, which I now use all the time - and it does what it says on the box!

larmy16

Well the Panny can be a bit strange at times. I have in the past, turned out a perfectly respectable loaf with ordinary value plain flour from Sainsburys (I think). I read of several people on the forum saying they often used the value flour and could not tell the difference.

The other day I bought two packs of Be Ro(supposed to be quality) plain flour cos it was on offer. My Panny has turned out three duff loaves using the flour. First time I thought it was cos I tried rapid bake. The second because I cut down on the sugar as someone on here said they did to no ill effect on the bread. The third, I followed the Panasonic medium white loaf on the four hours programme and it turned out all spongy and rubbery and flat.

So it was back to strong bread flour and overnight timer and this morning woke up to a perfectly baked loaf. So my Panny seems to be quite sensitive about the flour it uses.

Anyone else had this kind of experience using plain flour, and not strong bread flour??

Sunnyday

I`ve had a couple of duff loaves but only a couple, one i believe was the yeast i used but i can`t be 100% sure, the other time i think it was the flour, i have read somewhere on here ( not sure if it was this thread or one of the others) that the flour doesn`t seem to be consistent in quality and some shops may have had a bad batch.
Everythings fine most of the time and i`m gonna start trying the recipes out soon.
I want to make a wholemeal loaf but keep forgetting to buy the flour.:rolleyes:
SD

Lorian

I've noticed that tesco own brand whoelmeal is much heavier/browner than hovis wholemeal. The Hovis definitely makes a better loaf. However whith stong white anything seems to make a good load for me, we just buy the cheapest or whats on offer.

Jo_anne_2

Another success for the Panny tonight! :money:I have just made the brioche loaf from the recipe booklet and it turned out beautifully. I am seriously impressed with this BM :j

Sola

My wholemeal loaf has turned out lovely - quite dense and bendy with a hard crust and very easy to slice thinly, almost like rye bread. I followed the XL recipe but it's nowhere as big as the white XL I did. Gorgeous with real butter and marmalade for breakfast.

Swan_2

about yeast in bulk ... I've just come across Fermipan, it's available in 500g packs & according to this Panny thread on the MOTELY FOOL site, it can be used in BMs

I did a bit of research & you can get it from some health food shops (seems to cost around £3-ish) or buy on-line, cheapest I've seen it is from the second link in the second post, in the Motley Fool thread, just under £5 delivered

according to a couple of sources I've seen, including FLOURBIN* (although they have a disclaimer ) you can freeze what you're not using immediately


*great site, thanks to FrenchMaid for the link in the tapioca flour thread
they have some amazing (but not cheap) flours, & even a recommendation from Panasonic. minimum delivery charge is around £7 though, but you can get up to 28Kg for that, I'm busy working up an order

Clutterfree

Morning All!
Well I am loving my Panny - so far I have made lovely white, wholemeal, 50/50, ciabatta loaves & bread dough for rolls.
I have also managed to make ONE decent granary loaf but the last 2 I have made have come out risen on one side but sunk on the other side!
I was trying to work out why the difference between the first loaf and the last 2 as I used all the same ingredients. The only difference was that for the first loaf I used the ordinary bread programme (think I made a medium loaf) but for the 2 subsequent loafs I used the sandwich setting.
Any advice appreciated please. If not, I will use the ordinary loaf programme next time rather than the sandwich one and see if that resolves it.
Many thanks.
CF x

Whitefiver

larmy16 wrote: »

The other day I bought two packs of Be Ro(supposed to be quality) plain flour cos it was on offer. My Panny has turned out three duff loaves using the flour.

So it was back to strong bread flour and overnight timer

Hi,

I believe that Be Ro - whilst good flour for cakes and so on, is not a "strong" flour, and hence very poor for bread. You need flour with a high gluten content to make bread successfully as that imparts "stretch" and allows the dough to retain the carbon dioxide bubbles, giving you the rise. I guess that some cheap flours would be made from imported wheat (e.g. Canadian), which are naturally higher in gluten.

If you go for strong flours, you will not go far wrong - in my humble opinion, anyway. Sainsbury do an own brand strong white, for example, which I find works well, and is still <50p I believe.

Best wishes, and good baking,

Regards,

White.

taurusgb

Thought I'd share a couple of recipes with you all - one using the machine for dough and one for bakinf in machine.

First here's the recipe for the lunch box bread I made yesterday - kids LOVED it and came home begging for more....

1/2 teaspoon yeast
300 gram white bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
200 ml water

• (This is the standard focaccia recipe from the hand book but thought I type it out for anyone who is using a different BM)

Make dough using pizza setting.While dough is mixing make filling as follows:-
1 carrot
2 small or 1 large onions
1 stick of celery
1/2 red or green pepper
1 clove garlic

• put all veg in food processor and chop fairly finely (so that finicky small people can't tell what's in there!)
• fry chopped veg in 1 tablespoon olive oil for about 5 minutes and set aside to cool slightly
• Grate about 4oz cheese
• when dough is done, roll out to about 1/2 inch thick (I find it easier to use oil not flour to stop the dough sticking to hands/rolling pin/board)
• sprinkle half of dough with grated cheese, then spread cooled veg mixture over the cheese, sprinkle rest of cheese on top of veg then fold over the dough and seal.
• Cover with oiled cligfilm and allow to rise for about an hour
• drizzle with oil and sprinkle with seasoning of choice (I have a grinder with dried garlic, salt and herbs)
• bake 190 deg for about 20 minutes (I have a fan oven so you may need to adjust cooking time)

Serve sliced hot or cold...made nice easy lunch box food as didn't have to bother buttering bread and finding filling for sandwiches and as I said earlier - kids LOVED it.

Secondly here is a very yummy loaf that lasted precisely half an hour....

1 tsp yeast
250 gram wholemeal bread flour
250 gram white bread flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
360 ml liquid (either tap water or water saved from cooking vegetables or - and this is really nice- the whey from my HM yogurt when I've strained it to make my version of fromage frais)

1 teaspoon flour
1 roughly chopped large red onion

• Add all main ingredients to pan
• mix red onion with the teaspoon of flour and put in raisin dispenser(or set aside to add at the beep if you don't have the dispenser model)
• set machine to whole wheat bake raisin programme and choose large loaf setting

This is gorgeous as part of a ploughmans or with cheese and pickle

Enjoy :j:j:j

PS: Just in case anyone is wondering about the lack of milk powder or sugar - I NEVER use either in my bread and so far (touch wood) I have never had a failure!