Bread maker recipes? Tips and tricks?

four months of buying bread every other day

Holy shit you eat a lot of bread. Or have a bunch of kids.

It's been a second since I've used mine as I'm trying to eat less bread but my preference was to use more or less the standard recipe from my manual (no added sugar, just water, a little oil oil, salt, flour, yeast) but add chopped jalapenos and sharp cheddar between scoops of flour. Usually like three or four fresh jalapenos diced up and a few pinches of preshredded. I'm sure manually shredded would be "preferred" but I never noticed a problem from the anti-caking powder or whatever it is. I would round down the water a tiny bit if the jalapenos seemed especially fresh/moist but otherwise it would come out fine without much adjustments.

As for advice... make sure you remember to put the paddle in. That time I forgot was very disappointing.

eta: I would sometimes also add in some vanilla if making plain bread. Just a little for a little bit of extra flavor and a whole lot of wonderful smell.

Lots of advice in here to "Skip the bread maker!" but they're all wrong.

I started making bread in 2017 and then covid hit and I had lots of time to practice. But all the arm-chair experts were really frustrating, and the effor to make bread started taking the joy out of it. Enter: The 15 year old bread-maker.

90% of it's job is mixing, the other 10% is cooking. And you don't HAVE to cook your bread in the bread-maker. I have been known to use it to make dough, then transfer that to the dutch oven.

Bread is very forgiving and mistakes are edible.

Ken Forkish's book FWSY is incredible, and has lots of recipies for different styles of bread. It does include a lot of manual mixing, but once you know the baker's ratios, you can just throw THOSE into your bread-maker, and you're off to the races. The most important lesson that the book will teach you is that 4 ingredients is enough. If you're adding a lot of sugar/oil to your bread, you might just be over complicating it.

We use our bread maker a lot. A few of the replies are suggesting that you could learn to make bread by hand. Which isn't bad advice, but I've found that I use bread maker bread for different things Vs hand made bread. So to cut that long story short - why not do both!

As for advice for bread maker recipes:

1. We've settled on a 50:50 wholemeal / white loaf, which for me really is the best of both. 200g white, 200g wholemeal, 5g salt (1tsp), 300ml water, 15g (1 tbsp) oil, 3g (3/4 tsp) instant yeast.
2. If your bread machine recipe tells you to add sugar to the mix, try leaving it out. On our machine it makes no difference to how the bread rises, and you can avoid a little processed sugar, and the weird sweet bread flavour.
3. If yout machine has a delay function, use it. Waking up to freshly baked bread is just wonderful. Prep the machine before going to bed, go to sleep, wake up, eat fresh bread. No effort, no fuss, just wonderful.
4. You can get a slightly more developed crust on the bread for leaving the bread in the machine for 30mins after it tells you that it's done. Much longer than this and the bread gets wet and leathery. It will never rival a hand made sourdough crust, but it's something.

My advice is if you can, buy one that is used from a thrift store. I bought mine for ~$10, six years ago. I have churned out many, many loaves of bread, some made entirely in the machine and some in the oven. If you do the dough option and finish in the oven, I really don't think the quality makes that big of difference between models. However, it is divine to set the bread machine to start and end right when you are getting out of bed in the morning, with the whole house smelling amazing.

I really have two primary recipes I use:

• King Arthur White Bread Machine Recipe

• King Arthur Wheat Bread Machine Recipe

Buy yourself a scale that measures in grams, if you don't already have one, and just put your ingredients in wet first, then dry.

This style bread slicer has also been great for me if you like to vary the thickness of your bread.

Buy yourself a good bread box you can clean easily and put away in storage. If you have bought bread from the grocery store, you will find your homemade bread will last on average ~4-5 days depending on how you store it. The bread on the first and second day is the best. You will come to be, weirded out a bit, when you realize how unnaturally long bread from the supermarket lasts. I have read at some point that you can use citric acid as a preservative, but I have not tried this.

Also keep in mind storage requirements for bread machines as that seems to be a primary driver for people parting with them. They are bulky and have odd dimensions, so you may have to get creative on where you store yours when not in use.

Finally, get a good bread knife! You want one with a nice serrated edge and use it only for your bread.

Some oven baking tips:

• I typically set my white bread for ~30-40 minutes between 350-400 degrees Fahrenheit. I use an instant read thermometer to check when it gets above 200 degrees.
• Don't be afraid to liberally grease your bread pan if you are using non-stick. Cooking spray works best but butter is always the preferred option.

Edit: One more thing to add. Since the bread quality does not last as long as the grocery store, learn to make croutons! Super easy to make and will allow you to get some more milage out of your bread.

I have one. Turns out I dont care for the regular white bread from the machine and it doesn't last long enough to save money over buying bread from the store. Even still, I don't regret buying it because of all the specialty stuff like sweet breads, banana bread, etc which turn out great.

Also, it can be useful for breads which can't even be made in the bread maker. We use it for all the proper mixing and resting times for artisan breads and baguettes which works really well.

My recommendation is that you don't really need a bread maker if you have time. Bread is actually fairly easy to bake and it's a bit more forgiving than people tend to think so long as you aren't expecting perfection. You only really 'need' a bread maker if you specifically need to have the ability to put raw ingredients together and come back in a few hours to bread. And even then, before buying a brand new one, I'd check out the local thrift stores because they're commonly donated.

Beyond that, I'd say you should just experiment. Take a look at what fancy bakeries are doing with bread and see if you can try to figure out how to make your own version. I just saw someone make a loaf with whole garlic cloves baked into it, and another one with chili crisp. Experiment with different styles of bread; after you get used to making loaves, try boules, buns, and baguettes. Try using different types of flours, like rye or einkorn. The sky's the limit.

If you have any interest in gluten free bread, get one with a gluten free setting. At first, I didn’t think it made any sense to have a different button for gluten free, but it actually makes a huge difference. A bread maker without a gluten free cycle cannot ever make gluten free bread.

Gluten free recipes don’t have the yeast rising power of a gluten full recipe. If you ever do a punch down on gluten free dough, it won’t be able to rise again sufficiently. In a normal cycle, the bread is given a rise time, then the paddle spins a few times to punch it down, then is given a proof and bake time. The gluten free setting disables the punch down behavior, and only has a single rise+proof step. Without this different programming behavior, making gluten free bread is basically impossible.

Anyway, I never found a bread machine recipe I loved, but also never found one I hated. It is so easy to run though. One tip, don’t expect bread to last any amount of time. Home made bread should be consumed the day it’s made, or one day after at most. This isn’t really about spoilage, just that it dries out and becomes unpleasant. One more tip, you can use your bread machine to make dough and bake it yourself. I have a fantastic cheese bread recipe where the cheese is layered into the dough and twisted together. Obviously the bread maker can’t do that. But it can make and rise the dough, so all I need to do is twist in the cheese, final proof, and bake. Very useful little machines.

a lot of people use bread machines for making / kneading the dough but bake it in proper pans separately, since the bread machine crust can be way too thick.

I don't have any recipes, but the most important thing is to let it cool completely before slicing it or else it'll be gummy.

Make sure it's well anchored. They usually have some kind of grips or suction to hold them on the counter but the last time I used mine the counter was a bit dusty and the machine jumped onto the floor half-way through mixing.

I find the type of yeast used can make a big difference in taste and texture, for normal recipes make sure it is "bread machine yeast" instead of "active dry".

I just use the basic recipe that came with my machine. It's actually printed on a sticker on its side. That's probably not a common thing for a manufacturer to do but it's actually super convenient. Consider putting your recipe right on your machine's side.

The instructions are very clear about what order to add ingredients and you definitely need to follow that. Liquids first, then flour, dry ingredients, lastly it said to put the yeast in a small depression on top of the flour mound. Importantly you don't want the yeast to get wet too soon since that will activate it too quickly or early (I forget which). So yeah, read the instructions carefully.

My biggest tip is to follow the bread machine's instructions for the order of putting ingredients in. Not every machine can handle just throwing items in whatever order.

There are lots of recipes online that I've tried that work well, as long as you put the ingredients in the way your machine likes. I've tried to change things up, and it just isn't as good. Something about how the machine warms up the yeast.

I love my machine, but I can't make bread like my favorite baker, so I make my sandwich bread every other week, but I still buy my specialty bread from my local baker when he is at the farmer's market each week.

I have a bread machine but don't think I've used it in the last decade. The bread using the provided recipe was okay but not exciting.

I do however really like Jim Lahey's No Knead Bread recipe for crusty bread loaves. As the name suggests there is very little work involved beyond mixing everything together. It also makes great pizza dough.

To be honest, skip the machine. You can make amazing no-knead loaves or buns by just mixing a dough in the evening and letting it cold rise in the fridge overnight, plump it out on a baking sheet in the morning and you're done.

Maybe consider starting a sourdough starter if you enjoy the taste. Seeing as you go through a lot of bread it probably would be pretty manageable for you and wouldn't create waste.