Hi, All!
I subscribed to this list a few weeks ago after just about giving up on my
bread machine. I once actually was so upset at my inability to achieve
acceptable results, I uncerimoniously tossed my machine into the trash, but
then thought better of it and fished it out. My problem was that I simply
couldn't get anything except white bread to rise and bake without
collapsing. And I don't even like white bread. Notice I say "was." If
you're producing hockey-puck bread like I was, read on!
A couple of years ago, I received a Goldstar 1.5-lb breadmaker as a
Father's Day gift from my wife. She denies it, but I think she thought her
gift would cause me to confine my breadmaking activities to the appx. 1
square foot the machine takes up on the kitchen counter. She was wrong.
Now it's pizza, calzones, bagels, cinnamon rolls, etc., etc., and so on and
so forth. But I digress...
After zipping (then wolfing) through my first thirty pounds or so of flour,
which I used playing with sourdough and pumpernickel recipes, suddenly I
was unable to keep the rising dough from collapsing. Something had
changed. New yeast, reducing liquid, warming the ingredients, decreasing
and/or increasing yeast and sugar were of little benefit. At best, I could
produce a loaf that would rise to just shy of the lip of the pan. I like
heavy, dark breads, but that wouldn't do. White bread was the only thing
that I could get right, and though that's fine with my 3-year-old son who
actually likes Wonder Bread (yeech!), it wasn't all right with me. I
resigned myself to making white bread for my son's requisite daily PB+J
sandwiches.
About that time, I was referred to the web page containing the archives of
this list. I read several of them and gathered that I must have been doing
something wrong. All those folks out there were successfully using their
machines, to the disgust (then the dismay, when the responses came back) of
the occasional by-hand-only-bigot impetuous enough to de-lurk. I read and
learned a lot!
My mom seemed to fared better than I with her 5-year-old Zoji, and a
friend, who has the same machine I have, said he had no problem with
falling loaves, so I suspected my machine was at fault.
I absconded with Mom's Zoji after work one day, and mixed up two identical
batches of pumpernickel,* and put one in Mom's Zoji, and the other in my
Goldstar. A few hours later I found myself wondering what to do with two
virtually identical 6" high cratered loaves (Duck-food? No, that would
have sunk them). I concluded it wasn't my machine's fault, but what could
it be?
I found that many of the recipes in the book that the Zoji-folk provide
specify resetting the machine after the first rise, particularly with heavy
low-gluten flours such as WW and rye. I mixed up another batch of
pumpernickel, and added two level tablespoons of wheat gluten just for
grins. After the first rise (white bread setting), I reset the machine,
waited 20 minutes, then restarted it. I noticed that the dough ball had
developed the texture of a big marshmallow. Very resilient. The result
was just what I was looking for. The top of the loaf just grazed the lid,
and the texture was consistent from the bottom to the top of the loaf.
More important, the flavor was significantly more bread-like; sweet and
yeasty -- you could smell the alcohol the yeast produced while the bread
had risen. My earlier efforts had been notable for their lack of flavor.
I then tried the same recipe in my Goldstar, but was faced with a decision.
My machine has a whole wheat setting with three rises of 20, 15, and 40
minutes, while the white bread setting has three rises of 12, 25, and 60
minutes. The Zoji white bread cycle has only two, though longer, rises and
has no WW cycle. Since the final rise was 50 percent longer on the white
bread setting, I decided to give it a try. "Push the button, Max!" After
the first rise, I reset the machine, let it sit for 20 minutes, then
restarted it. A few hours later, I was rewarded with a perfect loaf.
In the weeks since my initial success, I've followed the same procedure
with recipes containing as much as 50% whole wheat or rye flour, or
combinations thereof, with similar results. I have abandoned the use of
the whole-wheat setting, and as a matter of course, add 1 tbsp. gluten for
each cup of non-white flour in the recipe. I know from earlier experiments
that the additional gluten alone is not sufficient to make the loaf rise
and stay that way while baking. The extra kneed seems to be important to
developing resilience and enhancing flavor. Besides helping the dough to
resist gravity (I wonder how bread would bake in a weightless
environment?), the added gluten seems to make it a little more chewy.
I hope that if anyone has had similar problems getting heavy breads to
rise, maybe they can benefit from my experience. After almost giving up
and going back to store-bought bread, I'm glad I perservered. Thank you
all for sharing your experiences so freely. Sorry for being so
long-winded.
Speaking of wind, while checking on the correct spelling of pumpernickel, a
word I've never before had occasion to write, I found the following factoid
in the American Heritage Dictionary:
Pumpernickel (n.)
A dark, sourish bread made from whole, coarsely ground rye. [German,
probably from dialectal, term of abuse : obsolete Pumper, breaking wind
(from dialectal pumpern, to break wind, from Middle High German, to knock,
frequentative of pumpen, of imitative origin) + German Nickel, goblin; see
NICKEL.]
So . . . the word _pumpernickel_ means what. . . a flatulent goblin???
There's gotta be a story behind the origin of that word! Anybody know it?
Cheers!
Quinn
Laguna Niguel, Calif. USA
* German, Donna. The Bread Machine Cookbook III. Page 52 (substituting
equivalent measure of oat bran for the black bean flakes).