>My daughter-in-law is having a problem with her newest bread
>machine, the Zo. She says the bread is great, but the crust is too
>hard, and changing the crust setting is not helping. Does anyone
>have an idea to help her? I'm still a traditional bread baker and
>am not familiar with the machines.
There are several possibilities. The easiest is to use the machine
only as a kneader and bake in the oven...though that sort of defeats
the reason for having a nice machine such as the Zo. Next is trying
different bread settings: sweet and sandwich settings will bake at
lower temps than the basic settings. She can also (I am assuming she
has a v20 or x20) program her own cycle. Or just set a timer to go
off 5 to 10 minutes before the machine says it is done, and pull the
loaf out early. Of course, storing the loaf in plastic softens the
crust, but doesn't help straight out of the machine. Lastly, there
are recipe ingredient variations that will result in softer crusts.
I don't know how the list owners will feel about this [Editor's note:
it's ok with us to mention them], but there is a Yahoo group
dedicated to bread machine users:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bread-machine/
Joe T
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended
up where I needed to be." -Douglas Adams