There are few things in life more satisfying than eating warm, freshly baked bread. Treat yourself and your family to the wonders of home-baked bread. In today’s hectic world, mastering the art of bread making is easier than you think.

Art and Science

Great bread is the delicious result of both art and science. The art of bread making involves a combination of flavors and textures. Thread crusty sourdough bread with the flavor of smoked gouda cheese, and add a dash of minced rosemary and oregano. Or why not incorporate brandy-soaked dried fruits into rye bread? Let your imagination and taste buds run wild. 

The science of bread making involves chemistry and precision timing. How much to knead the dough, to what consistency, at what temperature and humidity. How long to let the bread dough rise at what temperature. The perfect time to add any nuts and seeds. The exact baking time and temperature for the perfect crust. For the best of bread making with consistently delicious and stress-free results, team up with a quality bread maker. You handle the art of bread making and leave the science to the machine.

Division of Labor

Even first-time bread bakers enjoy delicious results with a bread maker. Simply pour the ingredients into the machine, choose the settings that correspond to the type of bread you want to make, select the crust color and loaf size, and then press Start. The bread making machine handles the temperature and timing, leaving you free to dream up flavor combinations and new recipes to try from a crusty loaf over whole wheat to gluten-free options and more. To allow for extra creativity, choose a bread maker that allows you to store the settings for your own personal recipes. 

Making your grandmother’s rolls, breadsticks or bread with a fun or unusual shape? Let the bread maker do the mixing, kneading and proofing for you. Then, remove the dough, shape it and bake it in the oven. 

Wouldn’t fresh peach, strawberry or blueberry jam be the perfect accompaniment to a warm loaf of crusty bread in the morning? In the evening, serve the bread with freshly made pasta topped with garden-fresh tomato sauce. Some bread makers double (or triple) as jam makers, pizza dough makers and pasta makers, too. 

Multitasking

When you use a bread maker, you accomplish the work normally done with a conventional oven, stand mixer, the breadboard and several bowls and pans in one compact footprint. Bread making with a machine leaves the oven free to make dinner while ensuring cleanup is a breeze. And when you don’t need the oven, or you don’t want to forgo freshly homemade bread during warmer weather, your kitchen stays cool as the bread bakes to perfection.

Tips for Baking the Best Bread

When you read the bread maker’s manual and follow any recipe, you’ll enjoy good, homemade bread. To take it to the next level and make truly great bread, here are a few tips:

Choosing Ingredients

• Fresh ingredients are critical for great bread. In particular, always use fresh flour and yeast. Yeast is a living, single-celled organism that feeds on the flour and sugar to release carbon dioxide. This is what causes bread dough to rise. You need the yeast to be healthy and active to do its job at the proper time. Store unused yeast cool, dark and dry to extend its shelf life. Unsure if your yeast is fresh? Review Testing Yeast to ensure your yeast is healthy and ready to use.

• Use the specific ingredients required in the recipe until you’re experienced enough to experiment. Cake Yeast, Active Dry Yeast and Instant Yeast all have very different properties and are not interchangeable. The same is true for flour. Your results will vary greatly depending upon the type of flour you choose. All-Purpose Flour, Self-Rising Flour, Bread Flour, Whole Wheat Flour and more all respond differently to the chemistry of bread making.

Boost Rise and Chewiness with Vital Wheat Gluten

• For your first experiment, try adding Vital Wheat Gluten to your recipe at the rate of 1 tablespoon for every 2-3 cups of flour. Nearly pure gluten, this addition serves to improve the rise of the dough and the chewiness of your bread. It’s especially effective with rye or whole wheat bread or in recipes with many yummy additions like nuts, dried fruit or seeds. Vital Wheat Gluten is found in specialty stores, health food stores or online. 

Accurate Measuring is Critical

• Measure ingredients carefully. Remember that there is a lot of science in bread making. Precise, accurate measuring of each ingredient is critical to the final result. Using a scale is recommended by top bakers for the greatest accuracy. If a scale is not available to you, always use standard measuring cups and spoons. For liquids, transparent measuring cups that label cups or ounces on the side is best to get the most accurate measurement. For dry ingredients like flour, spoon the ingredient into the measuring cup, then level it off with a straight blade. Never scoop the flour using the measuring cup, nor tap it to settle the flour. Both practices will compress the flour, measuring too much.

Layering Ingredients

• Layer ingredients in the order given in each recipe. It’s important to keep yeast separate from the wet ingredients until the proper time. Typically, you layer in liquids first, then fats, dry ingredients and then yeast. This is critical when using the Delay Start feature in your breadmaker. When using Delay Start, form a shallow well or hollow in the flour layer that does not reach down to any previous layer of water, sugar or salt. Add the yeast in that well for best results.

Bread Maker Settings

• Different bread maker settings like Sweet, Whole Wheat, Gluten Free or Crusty Loaf are not a marketing gimmick. They configure the machine’s temperature, kneading cycles, rise times and baking phase based upon the composition of ingredients contained in each type of recipe. Remember, this is science. Use the setting that corresponds to the type of bread you’re making. Explore all the options and capabilities of your bread machine, and you can enjoy all that it can create.

Check the Dough

• Even when you choose fresh flour and measure it accurately, the humidity of the day and the moisture content of the flour will affect the consistency of the dough. About 5-10 minutes into the dough-making cycle, lift the lid of the bread maker to check on the dough. Touch the dough with your finger, taking care not to move the paddle. Unless you’re making gluten-free bread, which will be wet, thick and sticky, the dough should feel soft and sticky. If the dough seems too dry, add water, just a teaspoon at a time. If it seems too wet, add flour, a tablespoon at a time. 

Check Again

• Depending upon variables of temperature in the kitchen, humidity, precision of measurements and altitude, the dough may need a bit more time to rise than provided by the machine. Just after the completion of the Rise 3 cycle, lift the cover on the bread maker to check the dough again. This time, poke your finger into the dough. If it quickly bounces back, give it a little more time to rise. If it slowly fills in the indentation, it’s ready to bake or to be shaped by hand and baked in the conventional oven. If it does not fill in, it has over-proofed and lost its elasticity. To recover the dough, press your first into it to release the carbon dioxide and return to the proof cycle. 

For Crusty Bread

• If you want a crunchy bread crust, choose the Crusty Loaf setting. Then, remove the baked loaf after it has finished baking. It’s important to remove the bread before the Keep Warm phase begins. Turn it out of the bread pan and let it cool upright on a wire rack.

Warm, freshly baked bread is easier to make than you’d think. Fair warning though — once you see how easy and delicious it is, you and your family will never want to go back to store-bought!