Your best bread maker recipe

[mickandrorty]

Can i please ask for your best bread maker recipe? I recently got one and the ones in the book were gross and all contained powdered milk which seems to be like gold dust to find in the supermarkets round here! I don't know if I'm hoping for to much but I'm looking for one with a nice crust that is light and lasts a day or 2 once made. I tried this one and it was ok but quite dense but also nobody liked it for sandwiches the next day, it was ok for toast.

Add all of the following to pan:

• 320ml water (room temperature)
• 20g oil
• 1.5tsp caster sugar
• 1.5tsp salt Then add 500g of strong white bread flour, covering the liquid. Then add 1.5tsp easy bake yeast on the top of the flour so it doesn't touch the liquid. Turn machine on, select program 1 (basic), 2lb loaf, dark crust setting.

The machine i have is a Morphy Richards Fastbake if that makes any difference.

I cheat quite often. I buy the small packets of bread mix, multi grain is best. Do what it says on the packet. They are delicious. 😋

The milk powder is really in case you want to do a delayed start so that fresh milk is not sitting overnight in the pan. Although you can use it when making straight away you can just as easily use fresh milk which I do or many recipes are just water. Finding the right recipe is very much trial and error, there are several bread machine FB pages dedicated to the trials and tribulations of using one! On the freshness side, imo it only lasts a day and second day toast, there is no preservatives like bought bread, my solution is I slice and freeze the whole loaf once it is cold and just take out a couple of slices for a sandwich when needed, thaws sitting on counter in 15 minutes or give it a minute or two on defrost in microwave. Obviously can toast directly from frozen.

Is there such a thing as a chocolate chip bread recipe for a bread maker?

Difficult as the heat when rising will melt the chocolate chips if the kneading action doesn't pulverise them first! I'd say if you were doing it you'd need to do the dough setting only then take out the dough, knead in the chips by hand and leave it to rise and bake in oven.

I made brack lately and the dried fruit was just bits distributed through the dough, tasted fine but really they needed to be added last minute and I couldn't be bothered trying to time it, my machine does not have a fruit dispenser bit.

I find you really don't need to use the milk powder (or milk) at all in basic bread recipes.

Bread in the past was made with just flour, yeast, a very small amount of sugar (as food for the yeast) and a small amount of salt to stop the yeast growing too much.

So try just leaving the milk out. If you find the bread is coming out too sweet then maybe cut back on the amount of sugar. I generally use no more than a teaspoon of sugar and the same or slightly less of salt.

I find that adding a small knob of butter helps with the texture, but I have never used vegetable or olive oil.

My breadmaker is a Panasonic.

I use the recipe that came with the nachine but replace the water with fresh milk mixed with 1 tbsp of very hot water from the kettle to compensate for the milk being straight from the fridge. I find it works better than powdered and no hidden nasties. Just don't use the delayed start. Using a Panasonic.

Thanks, my machine does have a dispenser so perhaps that would overcome the pulverising issue?

With olive bread I get the same situation - lots of teeny bits.