Bread machine questions

[malocchio]

Couple of questions pertaining to bread machines...Do you select "whole wheat" setting if you are using organic whole wheat PASTRY flour ???


....How about half w.w. pastry flour and half unbleached organic flour , use reg. setting or whole wheat setting ??.....As long as you guys are pondering all this , how about my raisins not mixing in thoroughly ,and I do add them at the "beep " on "fruit" setting...Can they be put in at the beginning or will that gum it up ?..Bread machine panettone , do I mix the dough on dough cycle ,take it out,roll it flat,add fruits,roll into ball , let rise ,then bake in oven ???..Any advice is welcome !

 

[YetiDave]

I'm not familiar with pastry flour? Can you provide the protein content? It's listed by weight in the nutritional information

 

[malocchio]

I'm not familiar with pastry flour? Can you provide the protein content? It's listed by weight in the nutritional information

,,,,,,,,,,,,http://www.bobsredmill.com/whole-wheat-pastry-flour.html .....Using Bobs as an example ,but several mills produce whole wheat pastry flour.I have been using it about 7 or 8 years for bread,cakes,cookies etc. with great results...

 

[Edcculus]

It really just depends on your machine, and the instructions.

And you are using pastry flour? You probably dont want to do that. You want to use bread flour in a bread machine. Pastry flour is made from a kind of wheat, and processed in a way to eliminate the gluten. For things like pie crust, biscuits, cakes, puff pastry etc, you really don't want much gluten so they stay nice and flaky. Thats why in those types of recipes, you will cut in a lot of cold butter and keep stirring/mixing to a minimum.

Bread on the other hand, you WANT gluten. It holds the bread together, and helps it to get that perfect rise. Bread flours tend to be higher in gluten than eve AP flour. I'm pretty sure you can buy whole wheat bread flour. I think the Whole Wheat recipe that came with my bread machine calls for at least 1/2 cup of regular bread flour in addition to the whole wheat.

YMMV (of course), but I dont think you will end up with good results with pastry flour in a bread machine. I've found out the hard way, that if my machine calls for bread flour, you better use it. I've subbed AP flour in place of bread flour before, with terrible results. You can get away with AP or even 100% whole wheat when not using a machine since you can mix or knead it for as long as you want. The programmed kneading time in a bread machine assumes a higher gluten bread flour. At least in my machine, you cant individually adjust the kneading time. Whole Wheat probably kneads longer, and gives a longer rise time, but you are stuck to the programs.

hope this helps.

 

[Luc]

I used a bread machine for years and moved away from it when I got a stand mixer. In the end, what you need is something that will give you a dough that's properly mixed. I had issues with whole wheat as it does not contain as much gluten as bread flour. Sift flour would improve your bread greatly (already sift or do it yourself).

I often took out the bread and mixed everything by hand before dumping it back in so I got better results. If you add your raisins with everything to start with, it will be a bit better but it's hit and miss sometimes.

One thing that I noticed, the longer the cycle, the better result. It happened that I would use a super long artisan cycle where it takes 6 hours instead of the suggested 3h30. The bottom line is, since I had to manipulate the dough for 90% of my breads, I moved away from the thing. Don't get me wrong, those devices still work and can make good bread but a key is : Time, Mix, proper measurements (you are a chemist here, you have to measure), a very hot oven to bake the bread.

If you cook it too slow, it won't rise properly. But you also need to be careful with a very high temp oven (450F-500F).

 

[noodles hovar]

When we had a bread machine years back, I asked my wife to use the dough cycle on the machine then turn the dough into a loaf pan to bake in the oven. The hard part was done by the machine and the bread came out fantastic with no condensation or weird "paddle piece" on the end!

 

[malocchio]

When we had a bread machine years back, I asked my wife to use the dough cycle on the machine then turn the dough into a loaf pan to bake in the oven. The hard part was done by the machine and the bread came out fantastic with no condensation or weird "paddle piece" on the end!

...........I think this is the best technique when you are adding fruits or cheese,peppers ,etc...