Help! Bread machine recipes?

[Abinsmom]

I recently acquired a bread machine from Freecycle and have been enjoying using it to make whole wheat bread and pizza dough.

However, my bread (following the recipe in the user's manual) turns out really dense and heavy, and tends to be dry so that my kids don't want to eat sandwiches made from it.

Does anyone have any tips or maybe other recipes to make a fluffier whole wheat bread? I've never been good at baking or making anything with yeast, so the bread machine has saved me the trouble of guessing how to make dough rise, etc., but the end result isn't quite what my family likes.

Any tips are helpful -- thanks!

[Linnis]

How are you measuring your flour?

When I first started making bread it was heavy or too dry and not so nice. Turned out measuring flour by volume(as in with your standard dry measuring cups) can be inaccurate. Turned out with cups I was using almost twice as much as I should have. I got a kitchen scale and measured by flour by weight, using the proper amount of flour I have had no further problems. Although on warm or dry days I add a teaspoon or two more water...it seems to help.

[Abinsmom]

Linnis -- thanks for the tip -- I think I just read your post on another thread I discovered after I posted my cry for help.

I have a good kitchen scale, but don't know what the weighted equivalent would be for a cup of flour, you know? The bread machine recipes I have use standard cups and don't provide weights. Any ideas?

[Linnis]

http://www. erikthered.com/flwm.html

This link has a handy chart.


Also, try looking for English recipes. They normally have their baked good recipes, measured out in grams...which I find for more precise things like bread to end up with a better more uniform product time after time.



I personally always do 4 ounces = 1 cup because that's what Alton Brown on Good Eats said.