Application Guide
Table Of Contents
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Acknowledgments
- America’s New Bread Box
- Orientation
- Batterie de Cuisine: Know Your Bread Machine
- Making Bread
- Daily Breads: White Breads and Egg Breads
- White Breads
- Egg Breads
- One-Pound Loaves
- Pasta Doughs from Your Bread Machine
- Earth’s Bounty: Whole Wheat, Whole-Grain, and Specialty Flour Breads
- Whole Wheat Breads
- Rye Breads
- Specialty Flour Breads
- Multigrain Breads
- Gluten-Free Breads
- Traditional Loaves: Country Breads and Sourdough Breads
- Country Breads
- Sourdough Breads
- All Kinds of Flavors: Breads Made with the Produce of the Garden, Orchard, and Creamery
- Herb, Nut, Seed, and Spice Breads
- Savory Vegetable and Fruit Breads
- Cheese Breads
- Mixes and Some Special Breads Created from Them
- Stuffing Breads
- Circle, Squares, and Crescents: Pizzas and Other Flatbreads
- Sweet Loaves: Chocolate, Fruit, and Other Sweet Breads
- Breakfast Breads
- Coffee Cakes and Sweet Rolls
- Chocolate Breads
- Holiday Breads
- Express Lane Bread: No-Yeast Quick Breads
- Jams, Preserves, and Chutneys in Your Bread Machine
- Appendix 1 Bits and Pieces: Crumbs, Croutons, Crostini, and Toasted Appetizers
- Appendix 2 To Eat with Your Bread: Spreads, Butters, Cheeses, and Vegetables
- Appendix 3 Resources
- General Index
- Recipe Index
MAKING BREAD
This section is very important to understanding baking in your bread machine. It
would be worthwhile to familiarize yourself with this information before baking from
this book.
The Ingredients
All loaves are a combination of flour, leavening, salt, and liquids. The equation is so
simple that each loaf is only as good as the ingredients that you use to make it. Addi-
tional ingredients such as sweetening, eggs, fat, or other flavor enhancers like cheese
and herbs, produce loaves of different flavors and with individual characters. I include
vital wheat gluten in the following list of basic ingredients, since it is an essential in-
gredient in every recipe that is baked in a machine.
FLOUR
Grains are milled into a powder called flour. This is the foundation of all of the bread
we make. Milling is a complex process we take for granted when we buy our 5-pound
sacks of flour. Professionals in the flour industry evaluate each crop of grain for pro-
tein levels, gluten strength, water absorption, and mixing tolerances. Flours are care-
fully blended by each mill to give you consistently good bread from scratch.
Wheat makes the flour most commonly used for breads because of its
high absorption ability. There are various types and qualities of wheat, and many dif-
ferent flours are milled from it. Bread machine loaves work best with bread flour.
Bread flour can also be labeled “high gluten flour” or “best for bread.” Bread machine
bakers usually have a favorite brand, sometimes labeled “For the Bread Machine” on
the package. These blends have a high gluten content that develops well with machine
mixing. All bread flour makes a tall, springy loaf. You can also use all-purpose flour in
the bread machine if you add enough vital wheat gluten to boost its protein content.
All-purpose flour with gluten added can be used in place of bread flour in any recipe in
this book. Some recipes here do call for standard all-purpose flour because they are
baked outside the machine.
As you grow familiar with your machine, you can use combinations
of wheat germ, cracked wheat, rolled grains, whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, and
other flours to create loaves in an infinite variety of flavors, textures, and muted earth
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