BREADMAKERS! Bring me your recipes

never had good luck with the breadmaking machin that we had. (My mom bought it for us , we were the family guinea pigs. If we liked something then my mom would have her gift lists already made up for nieces and nephews and such).

ALL our breads looked and kinda tasted the same. I remember making some kinda fancy schmancy recipe with basil in it. (I substituted POT), It wasnt too bad.

Cool, Pan. My employees gave me a machine a couple years ago. I got into it for a while with mixed results. I am back into it now. The manual suggested starting with a very basic recipe. Do you have one of them?

a little pot can enhance the recipe

I've never used a breadmaker so I don't know a thing about how to adapt regular recipes to the macchina. EhBeth probably knows..

I have had several breadmakers and have both good and mediocre success with them.

There are a few threads around here with recipes and links to recipes. I'll see if I can locate them and post here.

In the meantime, this website is my favorite site for learning about the chemistry and science of baking. Once you understand those basics, you'll be able to do a lot of experimenting with bread recipes. There are bread recipes at the site also.

This is the section on breadmaking:

http://www.baking911.com/bread/101_intro.htm

and the subsection on breadmachine making:

http://www.baking911.com/bread/machines.htm

Here's one of the bread recipe topics I was thinking of. It starts out about yeast and finishes with recipes.

http://able2know.org/topic/127561-1

One thing I've learned about bread machines is to do the mixing process twice to develop a good amount of gluten. I let it go through the process of mixing then restart the process again and let it go on to kneading, rising and baking.

With some of the heavier doughs, I use the machine for the mixing and first rise and then dump it out on a sheet pan, mold it and let the second rise occur before baking it free-form in the oven. The heavier doughs get a better texture and crumb when baked in the oven rather than the machine.

The bread machine is fantastic for doing the prep work for pizza dough. I usually make a double batch and through half of it in the freezer for later and use the other half for making pizza that day. The bread machine cuts way down on the clean up.

Duuuude

johnboy

No

WoW ...thanks

I think this one does that automatically...with like a half hour in between

In case you didn't get the manufacturer's manual with your inheritance, here's a site where you can view it online or in a pdf file:

http://www.focuselectrics.com/supportdata/L4979revised.pdf

And this is for obtaining parts for it:

http://www.focuselectrics.com/catalog.cfm?dest=dir&linkid=54&linkon=category

It should include several recipes to get you started.

My machine is a Breadman. Some of the instructions here might be brand specific. Here is a recipe for Basic White Bread. It is important to have "fresh" ingredients. So when you buy your bread flour, also get a Tupperware-type container to store the unused flour, especially important in humid climates.
Let's make a 1 lb loaf.

1 cup water @ at least 100 degrees
4 teaspoons oil
4 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2-1/4 cups flour
1 tablespoon dry milk
3-1/2 teaspoons Super Rapid Type Yeast

The idea here is for you to get familiar with how the machine works. I can adjust, for example, for how dark the crust is.
I assume you got this machine with an instruction manual. Is that correct?

Nice catch, B-Net. W/O the Instruction Manual the machine is not really usable.

The breadmaker pictured in the manual has a different control face than mine but I'm going to assume it basically works the same.

Here's another question. How good are those pre- measured boxes one finds in the grocery store where all you add is water?

I don't know about breadmaker's at all. However, I think I can find you a link to Moomie's buns done in a breadmaker. It is definitely a make friends and influence people bread.

good...I'm a little deficient in that department

http://www.shaboomskitchen.com/archives/bread/moomiesrolls.html

Soft buns done right. This link has a bread variant at the bottom of the page.

These are the BEST buns for pulled pork.

<swoon>

A lot of the manual has to do with the guts of the machine, eg "positioning the paddle" on the drive-shaft. You know, I assume, to add the liquid ingredients plus salt first, followed by the dry ones, and then a little indentation for the yeast.
I have been cutting back on the yeast. My breads came out the size of footballs. I am in favor of smaller, denser loaves. Particularly with, for example, rye breads.
Does your machine have a delayed start function? That is great. Put it in a safe place in the bedroom and set it to start at (in my case) 3 am. Wake up at 6 am and the room smells like gramma's kitchen. Awesome.