Home Bread Machines

The bottom line… some machines work OK… some are hopeless… and then some are great for just mixing the dough and then baking it in your conventional oven... either in the your breadmaking pan or tansfered to another tray or pan.

While FG Roberts Cottage Bread Mix has been designed to produce a dough to enable a great diversity of free-standing loaves, rolls and other shapes, some customers are drawn to the apparent convenience of bread machines.

There are a variety of sizes and styles of machine available... ranging from the small and simple to the large capacity models with numerous settings and options.

As we cannot test all the machines and their countless settings to see if they work with our bread mixes, we can give some general guidelines to help in choosing a machine that is likely to give you good results... as long as you recognise the limitations of bread machines generally.

So before we give you the buying or using guidelines, here is a list of some of the limitations of bread machines. This list might help your decision "to purchase or not to purchase".

Limitations

• The failure of bread machines to be able to make other shapes like rolls, free-form loaves, buns, baguettes, pizza bases etc.
• Loaves will have a hole in the centre/base of them caused by the mixing blade. The hole increases in size as the non-stick blade surface wears, thus causing more bread to stick to the blade on removal.
• Machines generally make large odd shaped loaves that are difficult to slice, store, make sandwiches from and fit in a toaster.
• Most machines have difficulty browning the top of the loaf due to insufficient heat near the top glass.
• Many machines have very long settings required to complete a cycle (i.e. well in excess of the 2 hours it takes to make by hand and baked in a normal oven).
• An overproofed loaf in a machine can result in a sticky mess to clean up.
• Many people have difficulty working out the machine operations and which settings suits which bread mixes.
• Most gluten-free mixes require a tin side scrape-down during the mixing cycle to get the best loaf
• The initial cost of purchase and replacement every few years... as well as replacement blades and bread pans more often.
• Some machines have very large, wide pans which make it particularly difficult for the ingredients to be mixed in from the corners. This results in unmixed dry bits in and outside the loaf and doughy streaks through the bread or uneven texture throughout.
• Finding a machine with the right settings to produce a good loaf can be difficult as models come and go regularly and settings change.
• Many machines do not have hot enough or long enough baking cycles to produce a good bread from our mix and need finishing off in a conventional oven.

So what appears to be the simplest way to make bread is not necessarily so. However, some home bakers accept these limitations and still find them convenient.

Which machines are best?

General Guidelines only...

a) Machines with fully adjustable manual settings but not with large wide pans (see photo and comment below).

Bread machines which have fully adjustable manual settings will make excellent loaves from our new mixes. There are many on the market which offer this feature. You can program the time for each stage of the bread making process.

Simply set the machine for

A warming time of 20 to 30 minutes (or leave this out and use warm water to begin).
A short mix time of 3 to 5 minutes (or long enough to mix all ingredients to form a wettish dough).
A long rise time of 50 to 60 minutes (this will allow the dough to almost triple in height).
A long baking time of 60 minutes... depending on the dough amount and your machine's power. You may have to experiment.

The loaf should brown nicely at the sides but will likely be white on top.

b) Machines with certain pre-programmed settings

Some machines have built-in settings which work well for our dough mixes also. These have a similar program to the settings above already programmed into the machine. You just have to find it and experiment to see how good it is. Basically, a suitable pre-set will have one short mix, followed by a long rise, followed by a long bake.

c) Other Machines

The cheaper and older range of machines which follow the typical wheat-bread style settings (a number of mixes and knock-downs before a final short to medium length rise and bake) do not suit our current dough mixes.

These longer settings were designed for gluten based breads which required the dough to be 'developed' over a longer and more complex cycle to produce a light bread. But as our gluten-free mixes do not work like this, these longer complex cycles simply do not allow a long enough final rise and bake to achieve a good light bread.

However, these machines can still be used to mix the dough for you (see 'dough only' below).

What happens if you make a loaf in these machines anyway? Your loaf will probably be small, heavy, damp and pale. This may vary a little from machine to machine.

The Process

for (a) or (b) type machines above

Amounts

For SMALL MACHINES (where maximum loaf size is 500g or less according to your manual) use 200g of FG Roberts Cottage Bread Mix, 240ml warm water, 3ml oil, 3ml white vinegar, 3g (3/4 teaspoon) good quality dry active yeast.

For MEDIUM MACHINES (where maximum loaf size is 750g according to your manual) use 300g of FG Roberts Cottage Bread Mix, 360ml warm water, 4ml oil, 4ml white vinegar, 3.5g (1 teaspoon) good quality dry active yeast.

For LARGE MACHINES (where maximum loaf size is 1kg according to your manual) use 350g of FG Roberts Cottage Bread Mix, 420ml warm water, 5ml oil, 5ml white vinegar, 4 to 5g (1&1/4 teaspoons) good quality dry active yeast.

For EXTRA LARGE MACHINES (where maximum loaf size is 1.25kg or greater according to your manual) use 450g of FG Roberts Cottage Bread Mix, 540ml warm water, 6ml oil, 6ml white vinegar, 5 to 6g (1&1/2 teaspoons) good quality dry active yeast.

Note: If your machine takes a super-size loaf of say 1.5kg, it is unlikely to be suited to our mixes as these pans are so large and wide, the paddle cannot easily mix the ingredients around the centre and may have trouble baking the very deep loaf centre.

Picture A on the right shows the radical side collapse and uneven texture of a pan that is too wide to bake evenly or bake a strong crust… even after helping the dough to mix with my spatula and finishing off in the conventional oven. This was from a machine offering a maximum loaf size of 1.5kg.

Method

Take your bread pan out of the machine and measure out the correct amount of warm water, oil, yeast and white vinegar into your bread pan.
Gently swill the liquids around for about half a minute. This will dissolve your yeast.
Measure out the correct amount of mix and place it into the pan.
Select the right setting as discussed above and press start.
Allow the program to complete and remove the baked bread soon after the cycle is complete.
Allow to cool on rack.

Dough Only

Follow steps 1 to 3 above followed by 1 to 6 below.

You may be able to use larger quantities of mix than your maximum machine capacity would normally allow because you are not rising or baking the mix in the machine. You are only using it as a dough 'mixer'. However, larger amounts of dough may place extra stress on your machine's motor. Experiment with different sizes and listen for the motor straining during mixing. If it does, reduce the dough amounts to appropriate levels for your machine to handle.

Select the 'Dough' setting on your machine and press start.
When the dough setting has completed the mixing cycle, turn the machine off and remove the pan. If you plan to leave it rise in the machine's bread pan to bake in the conventional oven, then place in a warm place and cover with a damp cloth till it more than doubles its size. Then bake in your pre-heated conventional oven for 45 to 60 minutes (depending on your pan and batch size) at 210°C.
If you wish to remove the dough to make other shaped breads, use your soft spatula to tip dough out onto a lightly floured board and shape or mould the dough to whatever you wish.
Cover the dough with a damp cloth and allow to rise to nearly triple in size in a warm spot. This picture shows a loaf mixed in a machine but baked in the machine pan in a conventional oven... thus the brown top. It had a good rise and has a light and fairly even texture. The machine was an older style Panasonic with few program options but it mixed well.
Bake in your normal pre-heated oven at the suggested temperatures and at suggested times.
Allow to cool on rack.

Hint

If you end up with unbaked flour on the outside of the loaf, use a soft spatula to help mix the dry flour into the centre of the bread pan during the mixing cycle. Some machines require more of this than others... depending on your tin shape and size.

Picture A – showing
radical side collapse

Picture B – Select the
'Dough' setting on
your machine and
press start.

Picture C – baked in
the machine pan in a
conventional oven

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