all things Bread Machine Recipes! What's your favourite? How about adapting recipes?

Cheryl K Bennett wrote:In most machines, recipes are by weight.

Most North American kitchens don't have scales.   We are used to cooking by volume.

I make sourdough whole grain bread. Except in the middle of the summertime, my house is too cool to raise the bread, so I put it into an inexpensive bread machine that was given to me, that makes 1 1/2 to 2 pound loaves. I follow my regular recipe and put the machine on the dough setting. it takes about two hours. I follow the directions and put the liquid in first, then the starter and any other liquid i am using, like some honey or molasses. Then in a separate bowl I mix the dry ingredients together and place those on top of the liquid in the mixing container. The machine starts out slowly with the mixing so it doesn't throw flour all over. I push the sides down several times to help incorporate the flour into the liquid with a rubber spatula. Once it is done, I scrape the dough out, shape it, adjust the ratio, like add some more flour if it is too sticky. Then I put it to raise in a banneton, or loaf pan, depending on the type of loaf I am wanting. My basic recipe is 380 grams liquid, 130 grams starter, 10 grams sweetener, 500 grams flour, could be wheat, rye, corn, rolled flakes, and depending on how much stuff I add that doesn't have gluten to it, (not more than 100 grams of the 500), I will also include 20grams gluten as part of the 500. This has nothing to do with the bread recipes that come with the machine, but works for me. I use a cheap, ($15.) battery scale that weighs up to 6? pounds, that also does grams.

"Most North American kitchens don't have scales.   We are used to cooking by volume."

Before I purchased my 2 grams precision scale, I usually measured with a conversion jar. It measures by the volume, but has a different scale for sugar, oil and flour. However, flour might change its volume if you aireate it first, so results were inconsistent. Now, when I make cake, I put a bowl over the scales and just pour ingredients into the bowl up to the desired weight, no other measuring tool needed.

Measuring by volume is fine when the recipe is flexible and precision is not paramount, weighting ingredients gives the same results as the recipe always.

I bought the scales when I was learning how to make home made soap, 15 years ago. It's small, precise and I keep it in a drawer when not using it.

I never used one of these bread machines. My mother once bought one since my little bro is celiac, but my mother was never into baking and she didn't learn how to use it. The thing was gifted away.

When it's too hot to turn the oven on and I want to make bread, I just use the pan. You can make wraps and soft bread in a pan with a lid, no crispy crust, though.

Christina Pierce wrote:I make sourdough whole grain bread. Except in the middle of the summertime, my house is too cool to raise the bread, so I put it into an inexpensive bread machine that was given to me, that makes 1 1/2 to 2 pound loaves.

Christina, try putting your bread that needs to rise in the car in the sun, covered with a tea towel.  It was my wife's idea and the other day it was 10 deg C (50 F)  but in the car was 22 (72 F) Worked fabulously.  The other things that you can do are to use a heat pack or warm the oven up and then as it cools, put the loaf in there to rise.  mage sure though it is not so hot the yeast dies.

ok I'm game, the roads closed for repairs for a few weeks, 4 slices left in the freezer, just might be time to pull that old bread machine out of storage and give it a try. no telling what might happen without trying

Bread Machine Panettone ... without a doubt is my favorite bread machine recipe! So easy and turns out every time! I make this bread throughout the year but I make a lot of this bread and send it out at Christmas time. Everyone loves it!
Put the following ingredients in order so the last thing on the top is your yeast.
3/4 cups of water
1/4 cup of coconut oil softened or you can use butter
2 beaten large eggs
2 tsp of vanilla ... (I make my own using Madagascar vanilla beans and vodka)
3 1/4 cups of flour ... I use "Montana"
1 1/2 tblsp of organic sugar
2 tblsp of powdered milk
1 1/2 tsp of fresh grind Himalayan pink salt
2 tsp yeast
I have an Amazon bread maker. It has 14 different settings on it and I use number five which is sweetbreads. On the second knead ... add a half a cup different kinds of raisins and dried cranberries. Most of the raisins and the dried cranberries are already sweetened and you may have to find that you have to cut back on the sugar just a hair to get it not over proof. But it would depend on your bread maker. The very first time I made this bread it over proved and ran out of my bread maker what a mess! So the next time I cut back on the sugar and it turned out perfect. If anyone needs any help making this bread please let me know! I'm always happy to help! And just FYI this particular loaf that I took a photo of, I pulled the dough from the bread maker on the second Rise and threw it in my large loaf pan and baked it ... Just to see if I could ... this is how it turned out.

bruce Fine wrote:ok I'm game, the roads closed for repairs for a few weeks, 4 slices left in the freezer, just might be time to pull that old bread machine out of storage and give it a try. no telling what might happen without trying

Bruce, I would love to hear how you faired! We had a lot of that "all the roads are closed and won't open for a month" stuff happening in my province last year, so it's nice to hear that people can figure it out and make it work somehow.
Wild yeast for sourdough can be caught if you've got no "grocery store" yeast!

I have no issues at all with my bread maker (Russell Hobbs) and have always followed the recipes to the letter.
I prefer larger loaves generally so in winter I rise and bake manually in warm kitchen and gas oven - 2 loaves at a time.
The pizza dough recipes worked very well.