Bread Machines For Dummies (18 page)
Read Bread Machines For Dummies Online
Authors: Glenna Vance,Tom Lacalamita
You can bake your dough right in your bread machine, or you can use your trusty oven. While the traditional method of baking bread in an oven may seem to give you more control over the finished baked product, the bread machine does a great job. Trusting it to bake to perfection comes with experience. However, when you have shaped a braided bread, rolls, or baguettes, you'll bake them in your conventional oven.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, the baking time in bread machines will give you a beautiful crust color and great crust thickness. If you feel, for a particular recipe, as if the bread turned out darker than you would prefer, write yourself a note by the recipe to check the baking time. The next time you make it, open the lid about ten minutes before the baking time is complete to see if the bread is done to your satisfaction. If you have any doubt, use an instant-read thermometer as described in Chapter 7. The bread is completely baked if the thermometer reads 190° to 195° when inserted halfway into the loaf.
Perhaps you are consistently experiencing a darker crust than you would like when you use a particular cycle. Many manuals have a chart in them that describes how long each activity in the cycle is. If you have this chart, you will be able to determine if this is the best cycle for you to choose. You can either select a cycle with a shorter baking time or you can check your bread for doneness before the baking time is complete.
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If you take your bread out of the machine before the cycle is complete, be sure to hold Stop/Clear until the program has cleared and the machine shuts off. Usually the machine will signal that it's off with a beep, or the digital read-out will register 0:00. To protect your bread machine's computer chip, do not unplug the machine before you've cleared the program. (We've already warned you about this, but we've seen so many bread machines ruined that we thought we'd warn you again.)
We like to take the yeast bread out of the machine and put it on a cooling rack as soon as the baking cycle is complete. The quick breads made with baking powder and baking soda, as well as the gluten-free breads, need a longer time in the pan to firm up their structure. Let them rest approximately ten minutes with the pan on the cooling rack before removing the bread to the rack. If the kneading blade is still in the bread, it can be removed easily while the bread is hot, with minor disruption to the loaf. See the sidebar, “Another use for a crochet hook.”
Prevent giving away your kneading blade with your good bread. Get in the habit of
always
removing the kneading blade as soon as you take the bread out of the pan. This will help you keep track of your blade. Very often it's difficult or impossible to get a replacement blade. What good is a bread machine without a kneading blade? It's too small for an end table, and too heavy for a portable cooler.
Most bread machines have a cooling-down time following the Bake cycle. It's a great feature to use when you're not there to take the bread out of the pan when the baking cycle is complete. If you notice the crust feels damp after the cooling-down time, don't fret. It will be okay as soon as it's exposed, for a short time, to air.
A crochet hook works great to remove a kneading blade from the loaf. Insert it in the hole where the blade fits on the shaft. Gently work the blade out of the loaf. If you do this as soon as you take the bread out of the pan, there is little disruption to the loaf.
Always preheat your oven before you place the unbaked dough into it. A hot oven is what gives your dough that wonderful oven spring.
Too low an oven temperature allows the bread to rise too long before the crust forms. Then the grain is coarse and thick, and the crust is usually very thick. A higher temperature produces a better oven spring, good volume, and a fine grain texture, because the crust sets sooner.
The temperature most commonly used for baking breads is 375°.
A very sweet yeast bread or a quick bread is baked at a lower temperature, 350°.
400° to 425° is used for breads with low or no sugar, such as French bread.
The baking time for smaller items like dinner rolls or muffins is shorter than it is for breads and coffeecakes, but the oven temperature is the same. The best way to determine if the bread is completely baked is with an instant-read thermometer. If the thermometer reads 190° to 195° when inserted halfway into the loaf, roll, or coffeecake, you're ready to start cooling.
Shiny pans are not always the best baking pans for yeast breads. Often the top of the loaf will brown, but the sides will remain light. To prepare new, shiny pans for baking, wash them thoroughly, and then place them in a 400° oven for several hours. Remove them carefully and cool. Repeat this process two or three times before you use them. The first time you use the pans for actual baking, grease them evenly and thoroughly. Don't wash them when you're done, but wipe them out with a paper towel. The next time you bake with them, it's not necessary to grease the whole pan thoroughly, just the corners. Lightly grease the sides and the bottom.
You may have heard otherwise, but you don't have to lower the temperature of the oven when you're using Pyrex â unless you're baking a very sweet dough with lots of sugar. In this case, lower the oven by 25°.
Here's another plan-ahead trick for dinner rolls.
You can make your own brown-and-serve pan rolls. Bake the rolls in a 275° oven for 50 minutes. Then let set for 30 minutes in pans. Turn the rolls out of the pans; cool on a wire rack to room temperature. Wrap them in freezer weight aluminum foil, and then place in a self-sealing, plastic freezer bag and refrigerate (one week, max) or freeze (one month, max).
It's best to thaw the frozen rolls before you finish baking them. Remove them from the plastic bag, and slightly open the foil. When they are defrosted, bake them in a 450° oven for seven minutes, until golden brown.
Prevent soggy crust syndrome by cooling your breads on racks, or crosswise on your baking pan. This allows air to circulate around your breads so that evaporating moisture does not condense into your crust.
That bread smells so good, and the gastric juices are flowing. Can you wait 20 minutes more?
The bread actually finishes baking as it cools.
If you tear or cut into a loaf too soon, you will find the center is still doughy. Glenna's boys never could wait. They didn't care if the bread was doughy. You might say they weren't connoisseurs, just aficionados, of fresh bread â with huge appetites.
Thin, serrated knives cut the bread without destroying the crust and the inside texture. Use a back-and-forth sawing motion with a very little pressure on the bread. Let the knife do the work, not your muscle strength. Some people prefer an electric knife. Here again, be sure to let the knife cut the bread without a lot of downward force from your hand. You will notice that when you let the knife cut without you strong-arming you will have more control over the thickness and the evenness of the slices.
One of the greatest pleasures of home-baked bread is that heavenly aroma during rising and baking. Another is that you know what ingredients go into that bread â no preservatives. Homemade bread, however, has a limited shelf life. Because Glenna's children are now out of the nest, she and John seldom need more than a slice or two at a time. She has a great solution for keeping it fresh for days on end. Freeze it.
Here's how. Slice the completely cooled bread, and then stack the bread back together. Wrap the bread in aluminum foil or plastic wrap to hold it together, with the least amount of air around it. Then place the wrapped loaf in a self-sealing, plastic freezer bag and freeze. When you're ready to serve or eat the bread, you can open the frozen package and pop off just the number of slices you need. Rewrap the remaining part of the loaf and return it to the freezer. The bread slices will thaw in a few minutes at room temperature, or you can microwave them for 10 to 15 seconds on high.
Some people prefer not to slice the bread before freezing. If you don't, it takes about three hours to defrost a solid loaf of bread at room temperature. You can also thaw the loaf in the aluminum foil in a 250° to 300° oven for about 30 to 40 minutes.
Take the time to label the bread with the name of the bread and the date you put it in the freezer. You'll be glad you did when you go to look for what you want in your freezer compartment. It's so easy to have a frozen bread, with no idea how long it's been in the freezer. Actually, it seems like bread will keep fresh forever when wrapped properly and frozen, but still it's a good idea to rotate the stock, so to speak.
All breads freeze well. You don't have to wrap dinner rolls in individual foil, but be sure to use a heavy freezer bag. You can even freeze frosted, iced, or decorated coffeecakes. Place them in the freezer unwrapped until they're frozen. Remove, wrap in freezer foil, place in a large, plastic, self-sealing freezer bag, label, and return to the freezer. The quick freeze sets the icing so that it will not become smeared from the wrapping.
If stale bread is frozen, it will still be stale bread after it's defrosted. If fresh bread is frozen, it will still be fresh bread after defrosting.