Hello,
I have a question for bread machine bakers out there. We have a Breadman
(I'm not sure that it matters much, but thought I'd mention that) and have
been using it for a few years exclusively (we don't buy bread at the
grocery store anymore). We've done pretty well with a few standard recipes
over the past few years, but lately it seems that no matter what the recipe
my husband tries (he uses the machine the most), if it's a made-from
scratch recipe -- the loaf rises just a bit & no more & we end up with a
wet stripe through the top of it. (The bottom 2/3 of the loaf is a decent,
if not light texture, but the top 1/3 is mushy).
I've bought a few bread machine mixes to see whether there was something
wrong with the machine itself. But they work -- the loaves rise nicely &
stay tall & have a good texture -- so it's something we're doing
differently... We've tried going back to packaged yeast (I used to buy
yeast in bulk from the health food store & store in a glass jar in the
freezer) and that helped somewhat, but we're still getting short
loaves. He's also been much more careful lately to use warm (but not hot)
water/milk, etc. as opposed to milk straight from the frig. No
difference. We've tested the yeast: it's fine... If anyone has any ideas
as to what might cause loaves to start deflating, I would love to hear the
theories. I know that without being in our kitchen as the bread is made
it's hard to know what we're doing wrong, but I'd love some theories to
play with.
Thank,
Patty
jpfog@knology.net