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breadman bread not rising

Bev C <retiredtaxlady@direcway.com>
Sun, 01 Feb 2004 07:58:22 -0600
v104.n008.3
Grace,

Since you've tried two kinds of yeast, the lack of a rise is probably not 
your yeast.  With a bread machine, I've found that strict adherence to 
recipes doesn't always work.  I've  had several bread machines including a 
Breadman and generally got decent bread out of all of them.  Here's what I 
would try:

Don't be afraid to open the lid and see what's going on.  About 10 minutes 
into the knead cycle, look inside and test the consistency of your bread 
dough.  You don't want a hard ball, but rather a soft, pliable one.  Most 
of my failures have resulted from too much flour and I find it's better to 
err on the side of a too-wet dough than a too-dry one. How are you 
measuring ingredients? Some folks swear by the scoop and scrape method and 
others prefer the stir and spoon method of measuring flour.  I use a scale.

Are you using bread flour or regular all-purpose flour?  Bread flour has a 
higher gluten content and makes much better bread. That said, you should 
still be getting "some" rise from all purpose.

If your dough seems fine during the knead cycle, check again at the 
rise.  You won't want to look often at this stage, lest you cool off the 
dough too much but a brief peek or two never seemed to hurt mine.  Stick 
your hand under the lid and make sure it's warming up correctly - your 
heating element just might be defective.  Touch the dough as well and make 
sure it's not gotten too dry or hard.

This may not be true, but I've heard that contact with the salt inactivates 
the yeast, so try putting your salt where it won't have direct contact with 
the yeast.

Keep trying and you'll get a perfect loaf unless the machine has problems.

Bev C