How To Maximize The Perfection Of Your Bread Machine Recipe

!±8± How To Maximize The Perfection Of Your Bread Machine Recipe

In both bread machine recipes and oven baked recipes, we only need three primary ingredients to make cakes- flour, liquid, and the yeast. Once these basics are prepared, you can add, mix and experiment on some other ingredients that will enhance the taste of simple recipes.

Baking a bread by hand and with the help of bread machine follows the same basic processes. The only crucial difference is that rising, mixing and baking are all done inside the machine. However, this doesn't imply that you must not keep a close observation on what's cooking in your bread machine. The little window is there for a reason, remember?

Flour

The structure-giving component in all breads is the flour. And this is further supported by the gluten content of the cake, bread, wheat and other flour varieties.

However, gluten comes in varying levels in different types of flour. Hard wheat has the strongest and largest gluten amount per cup. (Perhaps 6 grams or more in each cup.) Bread machine flour however, is somewhat identical with that of the all-purpose flour.

Gluten is important in baking since it gives the body for the bread. It also helps yield chewy texture.

Meanwhile, vital wheat gluten is a food item that creates the benefits of gluten in non-gluten or less gluten content flour varieties such as whole-wheat flour, rye flour, oatmeal, soy flour and cornmeal. This is usually used when your bread machine recipes requires such varieties as we have mentioned.

Liquid

The most popular liquids used in bread machine recipes are buttermilk, milk and water. The general rule of thumb in using liquid and other main ingredients is to allow them to settle at room temperature. If your bread machine recipe requires eggs, you must follow this rule too.

Since active dry yeast is dissolved in warm liquids (but definitely not hot!), it becomes an exception to the rule. One main point to remember in most bread machine recipes is that they seldom make use of fresh milk. (Who wants milk that has been exposed to the external environment for a whole night anyway?) Instead, we alternate powdered buttermilk or non-fat dry milk. However, if you're planning to mix the ingredients right away and bake them immediately, you can substitute fresh milk with buttermilk or water then cancel powdered milk.

Yeast

As we have noted earlier, yeast yields the body for the bread. Yeast is a one-celled plant that feeds on starches and sugar which in return, gives off carbon dioxide- a leading element in raising the size of your dough. Since it is a living organism, it can be vulnerable to very harsh conditions such as too hot or too salty environment.

But yeast takes considerable time to activate in the dough, more often 45 to more than an hour. That is why you often see that recipes require the use of another yeast breed - rapid-rise yeast. This is a special formulation that can be mixed directly into the dry ingredients.

All bread machines are not created equal. Please note of the maximum size your bread machine yields and the estimated size of the recipe that you will bake. Bread machines can either make 1 pound, 1 ½ pound or two-pound loaves. Please be sure to follow the guidelines as stated in your user manual. Make use only of recipes that have proportionate amounts of ingredients with your bread machine or try to adjust the quantities accordingly.