We love bread machines for so many reasons. Regular visitors to the site will know that we are huge advocates of using bread machines to take the tedious aspects out of baking, save you money and improve the quality of bread eaten in your home, nothing beats a fresh loaf! I have compiled some bread machine tips to help you to get the most possible out of your model or even choose the best bread machine (you also have our reviews to help with that).

Getting the Right Size

When we go to a shop to buy a loaf of bread, we think about the size. You may have a huge family and need to go and buy huge loaves that only last a day or two, alternatively you might get a small loaf and still find yourself with extra. Fortunately there are varying sizes of bread machine and some even allow you to alter the size based on what you need. The important thing you need to remember is that you will need to add different amounts of ingredients depending on how big a loaf you need, something that your manual will usually tell you.

Yeast

Getting the yeast right in a bread machine mix is something of an art form. There is specialist bread machine yeast that you should buy, which is designed to activate quicker and suit your machine’s cycle. This is sometimes simply called ‘bread maker/machine yeast’ or may also be known as rapid rise, quick rise or fast rise; you can pick it up in a lot of supermarkets. For the perfect loaf you want about 1/2 a teaspoon per cup of flour used in your mix.

Temperature of the Bread

This is where you might want to step in a little and not just leave your bread maker to it. Before your ingredients go in, they should be at room temperature. Generally your bread machine will know to preheat to around 400 degrees, and when the bread hits the 200-220 mark it should be done. A rough estimate for every pound of bread is roughly 22-28 minutes of baking time.

Loading

It is important to load ingredients in the right way and the correct order, this could mean the yeast last and liquids first followed by all other ingredients, or you might add the yeast first, other ingredients and then the liquids. Follow your bread maker instructions with caution.

Upkeep

I’ve already written a big piece on the site about the upkeep of your machine and how to clean a bread maker. It is important to clean regularly and preferably try to do so after each use, which will make sure there is no build up of crumbs or other nasty accumulations in your model of bread machine.