Bread Machine (8 page)

Bread Machine Baker’s Hint: Tips for Keeping Bread Fresh

Ideally, you will eat your bread the day it is made. Once you break the crust, the inner crumb is exposed to air and begins to stale. You want to keep the crust crisp and the inside soft for as long as possible. Starter and sourdough breads keep the longest. Any added fat will help bread stay fresh a day longer. Breads that include dairy products need to be refrigerated.

• Eat a freshly made loaf within a few hours of baking. It will taste best within 24 hours.
  
• Slice the bread as you eat it, rather than slicing the entire loaf as soon as it is cool.
  
• Store bread in a bread box, bread drawer, brown paper bag, or perforated plastic bag to allow air to circulate. Plastic is best for breads with lots of fat and a soft crust. Storing bread in the refrigerator makes it stale quicker.
  
• Leave the loaf unwrapped and place it cut side down on a bread board.
  
• Cut the loaf in half. Eat one half and freeze the other half.
  
• Slice the entire loaf, then store it in the freezer. Remove as many slices as you need at one time and either thaw them in the microwave or toast them.
  

If the loaves are too heavy and dense before baking, the baked loaf will be small and compact. If there is too much liquid or yeast in the dough, the bread will collapse when the gluten strands break during baking. A beautiful baked loaf of bread has a golden color to its crust and sounds hollow when it is tapped. Breads are thoroughly baked at 190° to 200°F on an instant read thermometer. You can check the temperature at the end of baking if you are not sure by sight whether the loaf is done. A loaf has not completely finished baking until it is completely cool and all of the internal moisture has evaporated.

COOLING/COOL DOWN

Most bread machine models enter into a Cool Down period to remove the warm, moist air at the end of baking; some even have a steam-injected hour-long Keep Warm period. To avoid a gummy, soggy interior, remove a loaf as soon as the timer sounds that the baking is done. In some models, the kneading blade sticks in the bottom of the loaf; in others it stays in the pan due to its position. Sometimes a shake will dislodge the blade; other times it is lodged in the loaf rather tightly. (See
step 12
of the Homestyle White Bread recipe, for information on dislodging the kneading blade.)

If you are having trouble getting a loaf out of the pan, or if you know you have an exceptionally delicate loaf, turn off the machine, unplug it, and open the lid. Let the loaf sit in the machine with the lid open for five to ten minutes. It will shrink from the sides of the pan as it cools, and should become easy to turn out.

The delicate texture and rich flavor of bread is at its best when it has had a chance to cool completely. Technically, bread has not finished baking until it is cool and the excess moisture has evaporated from the inside out. The crust of your bread will soften as it cools. Cool a loaf on a rack so that air can circulate all around it, before slicing it. You will ruin a loaf if you cut into it too soon. To slice bread, use a serrated bread knife, designed to slice without squashing or tearing the loaf. French breads and rolls are best eaten cooled to room temperature; richer whole-grain and cakelike breads should be cooled completely and then reheated.

Learning Recipes

While all the recipes in this book are written with clear directions, there are a lot of little details to making an electronic bread machine do what it does best—operate properly at the touch of a button and make a good loaf of bread by mixing, kneading, and baking within the machine. I have developed these first three recipes with expanded instructions as a guide to using the machine, and to familiarize you with three common techniques. The Home-style White Bread is a standard—also called simple or straight—dough that uses the most basic bread machine procedure. Shepherd’s Bread is an overnight sponge bread in which a small portion of flour and liquid are mixed and left to sit overnight and ferment (forming the sponge) before the rest of the ingredients are added to make a dough. (You will become more familiar with this type of baking in the Country Breads section of the Traditional Loaves chapter.) Whole Wheat Cuban Bread, made overnight using the Delay Timer, will be ever-so-slightly more coarse and chewy than the Homestyle White Bread because it is made entirely with water rather than milk.

Technique:
Mise en Place

A professional culinary technique known as
mise en place
, simply “everything in its place,” is important for excellent, efficient baking. It is one of the first disciplines an apprentice learns in a French-style kitchen. This means that all the basic ingredients and equipment necessary for preparing your loaf of bread are assembled and within easy access on your workstation. The initial preparation of ingredients, like toasting nuts or chopping fruit, is done, and all you have left to do is combine the ingredients in the bread pan. Because bread machine baking is an exact art, the practice of
mise en place
ensures that you are organized and focused, in order to make the best possible loaf of bread.

The straight dough and sponge dough are the basic techniques that will be used throughout this book, but each recipe will have specific instructions. These recipes produce loaves that are perfect for, but not exclusively for, beginners. Though the ingredients are basic, picture-perfect loaves will emerge from the pan: deep brown hairline crusts, domed tops, evenly browned sides. Once you become familiar with these recipes, the whole process of loading and baking in your bread machine will become as easy as popping the lid to check your dough.

Your First Loaf:

HOMESTYLE WHITE BREAD

T
his style of constructing a dough is known as the plain, direct, or straight dough method. The majority of the loaves in this book are made in this manner. All of the raw ingredients are combined at the same time to make a malleable dough ball. Since bread machine recipes call for a type of yeast that is able to be incorporated into the dry ingredients without being dissolved first in water, it is a variation of the rapid-mix method that became popular with electric mixing. This recipe produces a bread that has an attractive crust, a medium-textured crumb with an appealing cream color, and a rich flavor and aroma.

1
¹
/
₂
-POUND LOAF

1
¹
/
₈
cups water

1 tablespoon honey

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

3 cups bread flour

2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk

1 tablespoon toasted wheat germ, optional

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon gluten

1
¹
/
₂
teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons SAF yeast or 2
¹
/
₂
teaspoons bread machine yeast

2-POUND LOAF

1
¹
/
₂
cups water

1
¹
/
₂
tablespoons honey

2
¹
/
₂
tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

4 cups bread flour

3 tablespoons nonfat dry milk

2 tablespoons toasted wheat germ, optional

1
¹
/
₂
tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon gluten

2 teaspoons salt

2
¹
/
₂
teaspoons SAF yeast or 1 tablespoon bread machine yeast

  Place the bread machine on a counter that is outside of main kitchen activity, with plenty of room above to open the lid. Make sure there is room around the machine to use as a work area, and so that steam can freely evaporate from the machine’s vents.

  Read the recipe, choose the size of loaf you will make, and assemble your ingredients on the work area. For this recipe, this would mean your measuring cups and spoons, butter which you have cut into pieces, bread flour, nonfat dry milk, sugar, gluten, salt, and bread machine yeast. Measure out the water. Let the ingredients, including the liquids, come to room temperature. Fluff your flour to aerate it by stirring it with the handle of a large spoon. (If your recipe called for extras, such as nuts or raisins, you would want to toss them with a bit of flour and have them ready too.)

Take the bread pan out of the oven area of the machine and place it on the counter. Mount the kneading blade(s) on the clean shaft and be sure it is in place correctly.