I’ve been experimenting with a bread machine, a Panasonic, trying to work out whether it’s a dependable piece of essential kitchen equipment or if it’s another gadget like the juicer and the yoghurt maker that sounds like a good idea at first - “just imagine, fresh bread in the morning” – but actually becomes another needy machine that has to be understood, tweaked, waited patiently over and cleaned in the name of simplicity and ease. I’m getting to the limit of my machine tolerance, so David has taken over and started writing his own bread recipes for it while I’m working through bread machine trials of different breads and dough for a review we’ll publish later.
This bread machine is wooing me much more than I thought it would, and it has some curious benefits that I didn’t expect plus a few really annoying points that they gloss over in the ads, but I’ll save all that for the review.
that look it gets when the gluten starts to disintegrate and the surface starts to pull apart and collapse
David follows recipes sometimes and then – without warning - he’ll lob in extra flour, seeds, anything in the name of “using it up” and then we get a mutant bread when we open the lid. That was the case with his last loaf. The top crust sat about 5cm lower than it should in the machine so that was a warning, and the crust had that look it gets when the gluten starts to disintegrate and the surface starts to pull apart and collapse.
So when I banged the baking container over the cooling rack this brick of a loaf fell out. It had this rich ruddy brown crust and big reassuring aroma, but the weight made me think it could be a stomach scourer from a health-food shop. The sort Dr Kellogg would have loved.
Once it had cooled I stuck it in the bread bin and toyed with what to say when David asked me what I thought of it. Do you do that? Almost plan the escape route before the inevitable tricky question is raised. It wasn’t until this morning that he asked me, “what did you think of the loaf?”
I ummed a bit and said, “It’s like an old-fashioned health loaf from the Doris Grant school of baking. I mean, it’s good but very solid and firm.”
Then I thought I’d at least taste it before damning it further. I went down to the kitchen to make some cheese on toast. There was some gruyere left over from a Guardian recipe I was testing so I cut two slices of the loaf, grilled each on one side plain then flipped them over and put a good handful of grated cheese with some cubes of chorizo mixed in on each then slipped them back under the grill to melt and blister. The taste was glorious and the bread the star. If it had been a white loaf there would have been none of that rich nutty flavour that stopped it tasting fatty and dull. Just a few twists of black pepper on the top and it was perfection.
you can just see the bright yellow colour of the golden linseed in the crumb
I apologised, I was wrong. Judging the bread by the crust, whilst it might tell you what the inner appearance will be like, will tell you zilch about the flavour. This was the bread you’d want with herrings, oxtail, smoked salmon or blue cheese. It mightn’t suit a sausage sandwich but melt some cheese on top and it was the business.
Cover it with a slice of cheese and spread it with piccalilli, or top it with some fried herring roe with a little lemon and parsley, or just buttered on a plate with a good beetroot soup and sour cream, and that’s a perfect meal for me. Might even have some for dinner this evening.
Do you ever jump too quickly and judge a loaf a failure before it has a chance to cool? There’s a lesson in there I need to learn. Here was a great bit of baking that I would have missed out on by being too much of a snob about heavy bread. This might even set off an episode of competitive baking between us, in search of other heavy breads. I’m thinking of something wholemeal, with sunflower seeds and crisp fried onions.
Highlight of the week: Met Gordon Brown at the Mumsnet 10th anniversary party held at Google HQ. Chatted about baking and the Julie/Julia movie.
Hello. I am baking heavy bread at the moment but for different reasons. Would like your views!
My husband grows milling wheat ‘Paragon’ and I mill it and bake bread. As I have a hefty career in education I haven’t the time to experiment as much as I would like. I use 450g of freshly milled wheat (Kenwood attachment – whole lot goes in including odd bits of stalk), 400 mls water and a 7g sachet of dried yeast, plus salt.
Its is lovely for the first day and then it is like eating something that is good for you. Any ideas? Feel quite mother earthish and don’t want to make it so complicated that I give up.
Best wishes
Hi Sue,
Really like the idea of milling your own wheat at home. The easy way to make it lighter and less “worthy” is to add a small amount of strong white flour (or white bakers flour) in place of some of the freshly milled flour; perhaps 350g freshly milled wheat plus 100g strong white flour. Now, you could make it yourself by sifting the freshly milled flour with a very fine sieve and using that mixed with the ‘whole’ fresh flour from your Kenwood. The bran you sieve out is very good for dressing the top of the loaf.
Some other tips. Some bakers like crushing 1/2 Vit C tablet in with their whole flour as this will make the dough stretchier and stop it turning out too heavy. A small amount of sunflower oil, say 50ml in place of the water, will help keep it soft. Try reducing the yeast to 1/2 sachet; I find that quantity of yeast for 450g flour seems to make a loaf that stales quickly.
Are you using a bread machine, or making bread by hand?
Dan
Hello again. I am making it by hand and sometimes I wonder if I am kneading it too much. My farmer husband who makes sourdough and is meticulous in his approach, says that perhaps wholemeal doesn’t need so much kneading. I suppose I haven’t sifted the flour so I could try that.
The best day I had was wandering up to the wheat harvest, stopping the combine, climbing up with my basket, scooping some wheat out, rushinig home, milling, baking and eating withiin 2 hours!! What an adventure for a city girl like me.
I will try out the things you have suggested as they sound easy enough. I bake it in a big cake tin and would like to know what other size tin I should try. I am a real novice. Thanks for your response – it is heartening.
Sue
Hi Sue,
The thought of you walking through the wheat field to collect grain to mill has stuck in my mind. That’s the life I want.
Yes, give wholemeal flour much less kneading and keep the first rise (before shaping) rather short, just enough to see little air bubbles in the dough or when it has risen by 15% – 25%. It’s all to do with the proportion of gluten in wholemeal flour compared to white flour. All the bran, fibre and wheatgerm in wholemeal flour means that the white flour – that contains all the gluten that allows the dough to stretch and bounce back – is a much small proportion of the total weight, compared to a batch of all white flour. So less gluten means “knead less”.
For the vit c, you could add the juice of an orange in place of some of the water. It does make a difference to the resilience of the dough and will help keep it light.
Dan
Hi Dan,
I used to find that my bread nearly always turned out heavy and dense until, through a bit of experimentation, I tried two things. I left the bread much longer in its final prove, which I see you do in today’s hotdog rolls recipe, and I then put it into a cold oven with a tray of steaming hot water beneath. It seems to rise to its maximum as the oven warms up to full heat.
Of course, you can only do this once, or leave the oven to go cold and start again.
Bill
Hi Dan,
At the beginning of May, we’ll be encouraging people to dig out their unloved bread machines to get baking Real Bread or pass it on to someone who will.
I look forward to reading how you get on – especially if you come up with a way to make genuine sourdough in a machine.
Cheers
Chris
The Real Bread Campaign
Sourdough wouldn’t be a problem if there were such a thing as a programmable machine, but nobody seems to make one. It seems cheap machines have three programmes and expensive ones have 200, yet none give you the option to write your own where you could include the 4 hour rise or whatever your favoured sourdough recipe requires.
This is really exciting news. A volume of interesting recipes would be very welcome as the manual / recipe book offerings work well for the basics.
I have three bread machine cook books but find that many of the ingredients are not available here in UK. I have a Panasonic bread machine and find 1 teaspoon of yeast to be the maximum needed and usually reduce the water by 10 – 15 ml. Occasional misshapen/ heavy loaves have been edible when sliced thinly. This machine churns out a very acceptable wholemeal or granary loaf to provide for sandwiches but I’m sure it could do more.
Dan,
this sounds great – that’s how most of my bread turns out (by design), they’re rarely ‘domed’ – the pebbledashed crust just add to it’s charm. One day hubby made a loaf of nearly 100% Rye (home ground) and it only rose a little but the taste was excellent and despite brickiness was definitely edible, and enjoyable. I use a 10+ year old panasonic that’s got a few programmes but really all I use is WM which has enough of a rise for heavy wholemeal breads with added grains (added from the start).
Sue: adding a bit of fat (a small tablespoon of margarine, or oil) will help with keeping it soft a bit longer. All our loaves (made from varying proportions of home-ground wheat and/or rye and occasional additions of white) last several days without drying too much.
Hello Dan,
I made a heavy loaf yesterday, by adding some delicious Californian Prune Puree that I had been given.
Not sure if it was the starter or my spelt inexperience, but I lost patience and baked too early. Result=heavy (but tasty) loaf.
Peter
Dear Dan
Breadmakers are the best when you are busy (we are on to our fifth) and they make a mean pasta dough with minimal fuss/mess. Highlight of my week was my mothers 80th birthday party (we had a great time!) but she still didn’t eat the bread roll.
Sarah
80 is a great age and we can all only hope to live happily that long. And to stay in love.
Dan
p.s. Sarah is my sister
I have not bought a loaf of bread for about 6 years. I confess? to using a bread machine – but only to do the initial kneading (why do the donkey work if you don’t have to?) I then take it out and do the rest of it by hand and bake in an ordinary oven. I find this produces a better loaf than the bread maker can produce if it does the lot.
Hello
I’ve been baking sourdough in a Panasonic breadmaker for about a month now, after getting bored with the yeasted recipes provided in the breadmaker manual. I worked out my own recipe after fruitless searches online. I seem to be producing a consistently good rustic style loaf using mostly white flour and a quarter wholemeal flour. I use the pizza dough programme to mix for 15 minutes, turn it off, then use the timer to set to prove for about 8 hour before finishing with either the Italian or French bake mode.
I’ve been searching this website to find David’s reviews and recipes you mentioned would be forthcoming – I can’t find any. Can anyone help?
Many thanks!
Becky
Feeling humbled about my above claim to be making a consistently good sourdough in a bread machine now! The one I made 2 nights ago turned out sunken and heavy – I put it down to my starter being a bit overactive or perhaps just too much starter (I just dollop in 3 tablespoons each time). Thought I’d have to write it off as a failure, but like Dan I discovered that looks can be deceiving. My husband persuaded me to give the loaf a try and it tasted delicious toasted – really lovely open texture, very tough but tasty crust, far superior in flavour to the loaves I’ve been turning out so far.
Still interested in other recipes for bread machines using sourdough.
Becky