Mike at <mikes_room@yahoo.com> writes, on bread machines:
>I was never overly impressed with the results of these
>machines. First off, you can't put your ingredients in one, program it and
>leave. You think you'll come home to a nice loaf of fresh baked bread or
>dinner? Fat chance. You have to watch it like a hawk so you can add a
>little water or some more flour. Same as when you do bread "the old
>fashioned way". Leaving it is like a crap shoot and you usually wind up
>with a sub-par loaf. I have never had a failure when making bread the way
>we did before these machines
Well, I did. I had plenty of failures with conventional bread making. It
might have just been me... though, you know... I suspect that... :-
Mike, the answer with bread machines comes down to: overnight rises.
That is, double rises. Mix up on the 'dough' cycle, leave an hour until
finished, then punch in the relevant bread settings, entering the time for
the morning (or 4-6 hours later). I use soy margarine to lube the breadpan
first; and mixing up a standard 750gm loaf (300ml water, 350gm flour), I
never have to check how things are going.
We get perfect bread every morning!