Hi all, I recently got a bread machine. I have watched the video,
read the books and made 2 flour bricks and 1 sorta brick. I measured
carefully and accurately. I used the ingredient order I was told to
use. My only difference was I used unbleached flour instead of Bread
flour. I have done this plenty of times for hand made breads with no
loss of quality. My problems are these: I get a very dense loaf 2
of 3 times I did this. The center sinks and it never gets a nicely
browned top. The bricks were hard all the way around. Hubby is a
mason by hobby but I don't want to make him bricks. The two times I
got such hard bricks I used the timer feature and didn't remove
immediately, so I thought perhaps it was from getting stale, but my
handmades never staled that fast. Any and all help will be
appreciated. I do not lift the lid at any time during the process
either since that is a big no no from the books. I even thought it
might be my yeast and on one loaf I upped the amount by doubling and
the third time I used new yeast altogether. The old stuff still does
well on hand mades. Is this a mental block I have? Or is this in
some way me doing something the machine doesn't like so I can have an
excuse to not use this machine? This could make me paranoid, if it
lasts long enough. How long did it take other bread machine users to
get good results?
wendy in pa
[[Editor's note: It's the flour. When you knead by hand, you can
compensate for the lower protein content of unbleached flour by
kneading more. The bread machine assumes that you're using bread
flour and kneads accordingly - which is not enough for your unbleached flour.]]