Ruth Provance <rprovanc@gmu.edu> wrote:
>My new neighbor has problems with her hands, so she can't knead bread by
>hand, and she has problems with her finances, so she can't buy a bread
>machine or a heavy-duty mixer, but she does have a good-sized Cuisinart
>food processor. She made some yeast bread dough in the food processor
>this afternoon, and I checked it out. It seemed to be okay, and it rose
>and baked well. I haven't tasted it yet, though I am sure it is just
>fine as she took my advice for ingredients! ;)
>Does anyone out there have any specific advice for using the food
>processor for making yeast bread? Any general advice or specific books
>to read would be appreciated.
I have a food processor and it should make small batches of bread
dough just fine, using any recipe you like.
My food processor is a old Kitchenaid made by Hobart. It came with
a plastic dough blade about half the size of the metal chopper. The
trick to using it is to use the "pulse" mode for short durations versus
just placing it on "run." The other key is to not do large batches of
dough at once. In my machine, I'd hestiate to make a dough that
contained much more than 3 or so cups of flour.
I also have a regular KA5a mixer which will easily handler larger
volumes of dough, so I'm not confusing the two.
Other than adjusting for the volume of flour (with appropriate changes
for other ingredient volumes), there is not much to worry about other
than learning a good pulsing technique which "balls" the dough
well as opposed to just chopping it up. I've even used a food
processor at a friends house where they did not have the plastic
blade and I had to use the metal chopper. With a bit more caution
on the pulsing cycle, the bread kneaded just fine and turned out
great.
So, just watch the volume of dough you ask the food processor to
handle at once. Second, learn your pulsing technique so you knead
the dough instead of tearing it up. Then transfer to an adequate sized
bowl for rising.
With these techniques you should be able to downsize & convert ANY
bread machine, Kitchenaid or hand kneaded recipe for use in a food
processor.
- Mitch