Breadmaker Hints #1 Rev

Make sure that all ingredients are at LEAST room
temp. Put all ingredients in bread pan in order
listed. Yeast must be fresh! I keep it in the
refrigerator, but bringing to room temp. only takes a
few minutes. If you are making bread other than white,
you may need to add gluten and/or lecithin to your
dough. They are especially helpful when making whole
wheat, rye or other heavier type breads. They help
improve elasticity of the dough. (They are usually
available at Health Food stores and I have found
Lethicin near the Vitamins at Pharmor.) I usually set
the dark/light setting to “11 o’clock” unless I’m
making sweet bread, then I set it back to about “9
o’clock”. The key to using the auto-breadmaker is to
have the correct proportion of flour to liquid. After
the dough has kneaded for a few minutes in the
breadmaker, look in and see if there is ONE ball of
dough which is incorporating most of the flour from
the sides of the pan. If it’s a “gooey mess”, add 1 T.
flour until it makes ONE SOFT ball. If there are two
or more balls, add 1 T water and see if it makes 1
ball. (You may have to go back and forth with this
until you get it right G) While it’s in its first
knead (BEFORE it goes into the fermentation cycle),
open the lid and touch the dough lightly. It should be
in one soft ball. If your finger has sticky dough on
it, add a Tablespoon of flour. Let it knead a minute
and touch it again and check to see if it’s still
sticky. Keep adding a tablespoon at a time ONLY until
it’s no longer sticky, DON’T OVERDO IT. If it just
makes a slight indentation and doesn’t look crusty,
it’s probably about right. If it feels too dry or is
in two or more DRY-looking balls (not a sticky mass),
add a tablespoon at a time of WARM water. PLEASE DON’T
ADD TOO MUCH LIQUID. If you add too much liquid in
proportion to the flour, the dough may rise too much
and overflow. If you look in and see that the dough is
threatening to rise up over the top of the bread pan,
don’t panic, poke it a few times with a toothpick,
skewer, fork,etc. until it deflates a little. PLEASE
SEE BREADMAKER HINTS #2 Rev for continutation of
hints. Written in 1991