44 new of 66 responses total.
Bread machines always require you to make a few loaves, watching things and fiddling with the recipe, before they'll do it right automatically. (Sometimes more than a few loaves...) The machine has no sense of how the bread's working out, nor judgement nor ability to make any corrections as a human baker could. Once you've got everything right, though, it can mindless crank out endless consistent good results. (Somewhat like a computer program that way...)
The machine says it is supposed to take 2 hours 15 minutes and it did. This seems rather short to me but it did what it said it would. I will try more water, and warmer water. Since we don't know whether we even want to own a bread machine, $10 seems like a better amount to risk (they said I could bring it back if it did not work) than $100 or whatever the new ones go for. I think I prefer the hand-kneaded double-rise bread we make but this was interesting and we will try a few more times to get it better.
If I have time, I let the machine go through the mixing, first kneading and rising then either take the dough out to hand knead and rise again or restart the dough cycle to go through the kneading and rising again before hand shaping and baking. The only reason I bake in the oven is that most bread in this house is used for sandwiches and the machine leaves a nice hole in the bottom of the loaf where the mixing paddle is. I really don't like it when the filling falls out.
Jim is making another batch of bread. 2.5 cups flour 7/8 cup water (a bit more water than before) and warm this time. He reports that the dough again formed two balls but after a while they coalesced into one. Light instead of medium this time. What is the most flour a 1 pound bread maker can actually mix? We suspect the whole grain flour is not going to rise enough to fill the pan even with warm water - maybe more yeast is needed because of the relatively short rise for this machine? I suppose we could add a bit of honey to accelerate the process.
Every bread machine recipe i've even seen had some sugary stuff added.
Our friend who makes successful whole wheat bread says his machine has a 3 hour or a 5 hour whole wheat cycle. Ours does not. He uses 2 1/4 cups flour, 1 cup water (more than we used) and some honey (to speed up yeast reproduction) and gluten (to make sure it rises higher as the bread machine probably does not knead as well as hands and kneading develops gluten). He also said we could take the dough out after kneading, let it rise a few times in a warm place and bake it in the oven. By that point we may as well make a larger recipe and knead it by hand. I might mix the yeast, water, and honey half an hour before starting the machine to give them a head start.
Appliance that I think we forgot to mention is the crockpot -- we use it maybe once a month, to cook my pot roast (no vegetables, just meat).
My mother did hers in the pressure cooker with potatoes and carrots - this is all she used the pressure cooker for. We made bread this time with warm water, honey and yeast dissolved in the water before adding on top of the flour, but no gluten, machine set to Light. This gave us a full half loaf of unburnt bread. Is there some reason we cannot double the flour, or at least use 3 cups and the medium cycle? Jim thinks the keep warm cycle is so that the bread will not get soggy before you remember to take it out.
Forgot to mention the crockpot. Apropos bread machines: Ours has a small vented compartment in which you can throw extras such as candied fruit. We've never used it, but I once made the mistake of putting my nose right over the vent slots in order to smell that nice rising-bread smell during the rising cycle and got a snootful of some weapons-grade yeast gas. Unbelievably painful. What *is* that stuff?
Yeast gas??? Could be CO2 - was the pain similar to burping through your nose after drinking carbonated beverages? Bread machines have fairly definite limits on how much dough (roughly measured by cups of flour in same) they can handle. Experiment with care.
The fruit dispenser sounds like a bleach dispenser. We will try increasing 1/4 cup at a time. What is the symptom of overload? 2.25 cups produces a loaf half as large as the pan (not half the size of a regular loaf as the pan is only a half-loaf size). I suppose we could also mix all the ingredients together by hand and let them sit for an hour before turning on the machine so it would rise more, but then why use the machine at all? I suspect this one is simply not clever enough to make whole grain bread.
"Yeast gas" might also have some alcohol vapor; doesn't yeast produce alcohol as a waste product? A hot shot of alcohol up the nose would be painful enough.
Jim says this time he put in 2.5 cups flour, and more water, and then he 'threw in breakfast' - so we will have oatmeal bread if it works.
I don't think there could be enough alcohol directly from yeast to cause somebody an inhilation problem, but maybe we're dealing with a hypersensitive nose here. Yeast can live in up to 14-15% alcohol (winemaking), but beyond that you gotta distill. Here's my usual 1 pound white bread recipe for my Panasonic bread machine: 2 1/4 cups flour 1 teaspoon yeast 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon dried milk powder 1 tablespoon oil (I dribble roughly that much olive oil in) 1 cup water
If my nose is hypersensitive it must run in the family, no pun intended. When I cautioned my son not to get his nose too close to the vent he promptly gave the vent a big sniff and five seconds later he clutched his face and doubled over in nose-agony. Whereupon my wife decided to see what the menfolk were carrying on about and despite our shouted warnings she too suffered the fate. I guess nasal hypersentsitivity is not the only thing that runs in the family, although in our defense I must say you wouldn't believe something that painful could come from a bread machine no matter how many warnings are shouted at you.
Re: #33 Ask Jim about overload. (Depending on the design of the machine, it could be anything from poor mixing of the dough to excessive wear on the moving parts to the motor burning out.) Also, you can get a longer cycle with some machines by pulling the plug some time into their cycle, then restarting later (perhaps after the thing forgot where it was, maybe restarting a different cycle). If & how this'll work depends on details of your machine & recipe (probably take lots of experimenting).
I think this one starts all over if you unplug it. We only wanted to let it rise longer, not knead it again (which would make it smaller again). A 2 1/4 hour cycle probably works for white bread. The dough mixes ok but it simply does not have long enough to rise. It also does not seem to keep the rising dough warm and the kitchen is not all that warm now. The machine is a lot quicker to clean up than a bowl and spoon and pan. Non-stick coatings are better than the Teflon my mother used to use. It is not a good idea to add leftover wet oatmeal to a bread recipe - the machine does not seem to overheat, but you get bread pudding.
Today while biking home Jim found another Welbilt bread machine which differs from mine in having a 12 hour timer and a little LED screen instead of lights for setting the baking time. It also differs in missing its blade. A couple hours of searching found me a site that sells these blades for $10-20 depending on the model. Kiwanis sells the same machine complete for that. So we will wait until one of our machines wears out and transfer the blade. The machines are about $90 new, I read. They are popular among people with celiac disease who make gluten-free bread by adding eggs and xantham gum to potato starch and rice and chickpea flour. And who feel stigmatized by having to eat round instead of square sandwiches, believe it or not. Someone else wrote in that the 2 pound loaf was too large but you could freeze half.
What was the website, Sindi? I still need a belt for my Panasonic.
The particular site that I found only sells Welbilt and one other brand, but I ran across several sites that sell appliance parts online. Try a search on bread machine + part + Panasonic or appliance parts. Or see if your owner's manual has a currently working phone numbers. (Ours was disconnected). Or call Sears parts and ask them for a phone number for Panasonic parts. Or try the Panasonic website.
Jim tried out the machine he found at the curb, with the timer. It tells him how much time is left to finish and light med and dark are 7 min apart in cooking time. He used the dough blade from the other machine and the same recipe and procedure and got bread that actually rose and had the texture fos omething other than a wet sponge. It also did not burn on the outside (perhaps because it was 3.5 instead of 2.5 inches high in the pot) and tasted better. So either they improved the technology or the other machine has something wrong with it (maybe itw as supposed to keep warm during the rise and does not?). The pot and gasket on the found machine are beat up so he will rob them from the other machine and then attempt to take the other one apart and get it working with computer control so that he can run each cycle as long as he wants. Has anyone experience with this sort of thing?
Jim has come to the conclusion that the reason the first bread machine was baking unleavened bread is the yeast was sort of old, but he still wants to take it apart to computerize it as an experiment. I should go buy the other one at Kiwanis if I want to make bread at my place, he says.
Kiwanis did not have any bread machines for sale (they get them in often) but
two former electronics customers heard me ask for broken bread machines and
dropped one off on Jim's porch. He found a blown thermal fuse and is trying
to replace it with something similar (different max temp and physical size
since nobody in town carries the right part) from the popcorn popper. This
one will make bread in either 3 or 4 hours rather than 2 hours 15 min, which
should give the whole wheat dough a better chance of approaching the top of
the pan. He has carved a cast aluminum dough blade for the curbside find.
I am supposed to order another 50 pounds of flour.
The blender and juicer just sit there unused. The idea was to make
tofu with them.
Jim reports that his latest bread machine, which he fixed by replacing the thermal fuse with one from the popcorn popper (which is for a higher temperature) seems to have burnt up the motor (or maybe the fuse again?) and it made a bad smell and stopped working. He thinks maybe it does not like his heavy dough and he should have added more water, but he used the usual recipe. Has not taken it apart the see what really happened.
A bad motor may have caused the original fuse to blow.
Jim thinks only if it was overloaded. Too stiff a mix? What other appliance might have a motor that would fit a bread machine?
Another bread machine (with something different broken)? My impression is that those are rather specialized stepper motors.
Maybe he could learn to rewind the motor coil? He already rebuilt a refrigerator starter coil (just cleaned and adjusted it).
resp:14 I wish I could find a yogurt maker. Around here, they are very difficult to find. I wanted my mother to give us her Yogurta, but she said no way-- it had sentimental value, and you can't get it in the States. (She got it in Spain.) I guess we are going to have to beg my grandparents (her parents). Our veggie/rice steamer, our toaster, and our waffle iron seem to get the most work. Sometimes the electric teakettle is used. Everything else is used pretty sparsely. I used to use my Juiceman more, but I've fallen out of the habit.
I am pretty sure you can get a yogurt maker if you really want one. Check out http://www.lucyskitchenshop.com/yogourmet.html
They tend to show up at all the yard sales and rummage sales here for $5, in fact I think we even saw one at the curb recently. Any oven with a pilot light would work but you say WA state is all electric. YOu can also try making yogurt in a closed box with a light bulb for heat (a styrofoam cooler might work, with the pot of yogurt-to-be in it).
resp:52 excellent. It might work. resp:53 I don't doubt it. Yes, WA state is all electric. Don't know about doing it from my own design. Perhaps you could send one? I'll ask my grandparents, first, however.
btw, resp:52 again-- I like how the container is big-- I've seen yogurt makers that did little individual cups (blech) and that's what my grandparents have.
You don't need a design, just a warm spot for the milk with the culture in it to sit in overnight. Near a heat vent might do, in winter, or on a radiator.
not really willing to do that here.
Sounds like bread machines, even broken/refixed ones, were pretty popular a few years ago... Do you still use one these days and how do you like it? What about other electric gadgets in this day and age?
I use mine occasionally but have found that it is easier to just buy bread at the store. But, a person cant get "just baked" bread from the store usually so sometimes there is nothing like having a bread machine.
We can't buy whole grain bread without additives at the store and we are not even near a food store. THe local bakery mixes in white flour.
Can you buy zucchini bread at the store?
Bread without corn products (which my family members are allergic to) is too expensive for us to buy regularly, so I use our bread machine regularly to make dough (5-8 loaves a week, depending partly on whether our older son is in residence). I also use a yogurt maker as needed (1-5 times a month, also depending on whether Jonathan is around).
We have never put any corn products into bread. What corn products are in store bread? Sugar?
high fructose corn syrup (sugar) is a very common ingredient in bread
Immersion blender Analog crockpot with a temperature controller (sous vide, bain marie, rice cooker) George Foreman grill
We just used a hand-cranked shredder to make potato pancakes. It was so much fun we made three times as much shredded potato as we could cook and eat, which considering Jim's appetite is a huge amount. I found it for $2 at a yard sale in the original 50s or 40s box. The rubber suction feet don't stick too well any more.
You have several choices: