"Christopher J. Flann" <cjflann@imt.net> wrote:
> certain recipes never turn out.
>
> The two problem recipes are for sourdough and cinnamon raisin bread. For
> the sourdough, I made the starter as per instructions in a glass dish, put
> in with the rest of the ingredients, including yeast, and produced a
> cannonball. As far as I can tell the loaf never rose at all. It is the same
> story with the Cinnamon Raisin. The loaf increased in size about 10% in the
> rise cycle.
Sourdough:
Did you wait until the sourdough became active? This can take 4 or more
days,
and you'll have to stir and feed the starter regularly. Even after these
days
the starter may not be strong enough yet to let bread rise; it'll take a
few
weeks or more. Meanwhile you can use your starter to bake pancakes, or
just
throw the too-much bit out.
Many sourdoughs are not useful in a breadmachine, because they will rise
the
bread too slowly for a (non-programmable) bread machine. Now the weather
has
finally become warm here, my starter is also quite active. I make dough
in
the bread machine, and let it rise in a breadpan for 4 - 5 hours before
baking in a conventional oven. I haven't tried to bake sourdough in my
breadmachine, i don't think it will work. Also, quite a few
sourdough cultures (starters) are not strong enough to live through a
second knead and another rise.
More information on sourdough can be found in the newsgroup
rec.food.sourdough
and its FAQs.
BTW: adding yeast to your sourdough will not make your bread a sourdough
bread
IMHO. Try the dough-cycle and conventional baking for a sd without yeast
and
taste the difference...
Cinnamon-raisin:
It's probably not the raisins inhibiting the rising, it's the cinnamon!
My
instruction book for my breadmachine warns for this: cinnamon slows down
(or
even kills) the yeast. Try cutting down on the
cinnamon, or maybe increasing the yeast. I never bake cinnamon bread so
i cannot
help you with a solution, but maybe others can.
Happy baking!
Groetjes from The Netherlands,
Stephanie
"Any dish without at least one cat hair cannot have been home made"