Is amazingly good fun. It certainly has been my obsession for the past few days, but I’ve approached it as a typical geek and actually read up on what each ingredient is used for – my first loaf was a packet mix and therefore just fine. My second was possibly the most useless lump of duck-killing wheat that’s been seen in many years, but I have now learnt some things that are so obvious no-one bothers to actually mention them:
- Warm your water – tap water at the end of December (even in the UK) is way too cold to help the yeast rise, especially when on a rapid program and no resting time is given for the mix
- Milk is not milk powder – again, blindingly obvious, but swapping real milk for milk powder will result in a mix that is far too wet
- Just because the box beeps, don’t whip out the loaf – check the look of the top crust and don’t be afraid to leave it for another 10 minutes to help brown the top and keep it crispy
- White flour is boring; investigate wholemeal and granary – mixtures of more than one type have the most satisfying result (so far)
- Swap olive oil for butter – if you prefer, 1ml of virgin olive oil can be used in place of 1g of butter. This is what I tend to do mainly because it’s less sticky to measure but it might be healthier. Allegedly
- Think about things – I’ve heard some interesting ideas that include putting different ingredients into different corners of the mixing pan, and creating hollows for other parts and the most important factor was omitted: Which machine was this for ? My first loaf was a packet mix and that was fine so I tend to premix all my dry ingredients outside of the machine. This is a bad idea if you wish to use the timer setting
I’m not going to play it coy (like the BBC of the 80’s and 90’s) – when I use an ingredient I’ll most likely state the brand I used: this is not an attempt to get my blog sponsored but an idea to help out the very new. Most receipies state that even the same brand of flour can vary by season or grain source, so even giving the name isn’t 100% accurate but being confronted by the baking aisle in a supermarket for the very first time can be a little daunting.
For the record, I have a Panasonic SD253 and most of the early recipies I post will be based on the ones found in it’s excellent user guide. I have checked the entire booklet for any copyright statements and there are none, so I will quote the page number when I’ve started from one of these but for the most part I’ve changed at least one item…