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This post is a part of 🍞StackSmith's Breadlog
Making bread by hand is a wonderful thing. But when space is tight and washing up big mixing bowls is not an option, a bread machine is an amazing tool for making complete breads or just mixing dough for pizzas, bagels, and bialis.
Normally I use an old Zojirushi twin-blade machine which is pretty good. Cheap (from $60) machines present some challenges, and require some hacks to make delicious bread.
Cheap machines use a flimsy non-stick coating, so be extra careful not to scratch it. Use only wood or plastic utensils around these (sometimes it's hard to pull the bread out).
It is essential to use a scale. Digital scales are really cheap, so get one. Do not measure flour with a cup or eyeball it. With a scale you get repeatable results. Science.
1 1/8 cup warm water -- Must be first ingridient 2 Tsp yeast 1 Tbsp sugar 500g flour (Ideally, organic bread flour) 1 Tsp salt
This makes almost a kilo of bread. Everything else is a variation on this recipe.
You may need to fine-tune for your machine, flour, yeast and water combination...
Since measuring and flour work is messy, I usually get six 2lb deli containers and pre-measure six bread-mix packages (without water, of course), plus one right into the bread-machine bucket.
My bread machine goes through a mix cycle followed by two rise cycles. Unfortunately, between the two rise cycles, it knocks down the dough by turning the blade. The second rise cycle is usually insufficient, especially for whole-wheat breads, and the result is often a dense brick of a bread.
To avoid that, I remove the blade immediately after the mix cycle.
This makes for full-sized, airy bread with a great structure. An added benefit is that without the blade bread is much easier to remove from the pan. My bread is no longer mangled on the bottom - a small hole for the pin remains, but it's nothing compared to the wound left after pulling out the blade.
Once you get used to it, it's not a big deal. Take out the bucket from the machine! You don't want it to mangle your fingers!. With dry (possibly flour-dusted) hand, push the dough ball to one side of the bucket, and wriggle the blade off the pin. Now push the dough back and flatten it so it will rise evenly. That's it.
Without the blade, the loaf may rise too early and collapse a little at the end, making for a flat-topped bread. You can experiment with punching it down by hand early into the rise cycle. Even if you dont' the end result is still better than having the blade in (in my case anyway).
I use warm water and it generally works well enough, even with less sugar. If the bread does not rise well enough, try a two-step method: into your warm water, add yeast, sugar and a little (few tablespoons) of flour, mix it up and let it sit until bubbles start forming (~15-30 min). Then add the rest of your mix and procede as usual.
Give it a try sometime - it may make the bread yummier - or you may not feel it's worth bothering.
You don't have to bake the bread in the bread machine. You can make dough for pizza, bagels, bialis, or rolls. If you make your own mix, you can toss it into the bread machine and half an hour later, bake your pizza.