Baking bread yourself at home is something people are doing a lot more these days instead of buying a loaf from the supermarket. Because let’s face it, a freshly baked loaf of bread that you made yourself is delicious, right?
Freshly baked bread, the old-fashioned way
White or brown bread, with or without gluten? It’s all possible! The breadmaker is an easy-to-use food processor. You can easily bake all kinds of recipes yourself. You no longer buy it at the store, but you make it yourself. Yet many of these home bakers often run into problems.
Making your own bread is often more difficult than it looks
When you start baking bread for the first time, it often turns out to be more difficult than previously thought. Sometimes that baked bread looks just like a deformed stone when it comes out of the breadmaker.
For all those avid home bakers who set out to prepare fresh and delicious bread, we have some handy tips here.
Please note that the tips we give apply only when you incorporate loose ingredients in the bread, not complete bread mix.
What to pay attention to when baking bread?
Often the difference between people whose bread baking goes wrong and those whose loaves always succeed can be found in experience. Experience equals knowledge, and a breadmaker is a more complicated machine than you might expect. So when your loaves still sometimes fail, this improves with time.
We list the most valuable tips when making homemade bread:
- When baking bread, do not use measuring cups but WEIGH the ingredients
- Make sure you follow the recipe
- Always use fresh yeast
- Add instant yeast to the flour
- Make sure the dough is at the right temperature
- Do not use old flour
- Always choose the best flour or type of flour, brands of flour or flour make differences in quality
- Prepare all ingredients in advance
- Always choose a longer program
- Be careful with the dough hook. Once you have started baking, remove the dough hook from the bread immediately afterwards
- Place baking tins with two dough hooks facing each other
- Let the bread cool down thoroughly
Weigh everything, do not use measuring spoons
A breadmaker usually comes with standard measuring scoops. This can be a cause of failed loaves. In fact, these work quite inaccurately.
It is much better to weigh each ingredient on a digital scale.
Milliliters can also be weighed
With a scale, liquid can also be weighed in milliliters. If it is lukewarm water, milk or other liquids, then 1 milliliter equals 1 gram.
When a recipe says to add 300 milliliters of water, you weigh out 300 grams of water.
Always follow recipes carefully
It is important that you always follow the recipes when baking bread. After all, these clearly describe exactly what you need to do.
Most people who are beginning bakers at home usually look at the recipe for bread dough, but often the instructions for baking are not followed exactly. Then when bread is baked the result is often that the baking ends up failing.
Often it can be seen that when the recipe is followed, the bread often succeeds.
Ideal temperature for the dough
At the first rise, the dough should be about 27 degrees Celsius. If you deviate greatly from this then your loaves may remain compact while letting the dough rise.
It can sometimes be advantageous to buy a stick thermometer. This can help achieve the right temperature during bread making.
Do you use milk or eggs?
If you are using milk then you need to get it to the right temperature first.
When you use an egg, then you need to make sure it reaches room temperature first. If you want this process to be faster you can also put the egg in a bowl of warm water.
Use dry yeast
Always use instant yeast. This is made from dried yeast. It is important when using instant yeast that you do not make a porridge of this beforehand.
The advantage of dry yeast is that it keeps longer than fresh yeast. The yeast should be added immediately as an ingredient.
What often works is the following: put a pinch of salt and the number of ml of water in the baking tin as indicated in the recipe.
Then cover the bottom with flour or pure flour, then put the yeast and other ingredients on top should you want to add them.
Do not use old flour
You should not use flour that is old. Sometimes you can leave flour or flour for several months and it will already be old. This often does not produce good results from the bread machine. The loaves will often remain low and compact, in addition, you will often taste a bitter taste to your loaves.
So make sure you don’t store flour and flours for too long. Also, the cooler you keep your flour the better.
Brands do matter with flour
Flour and flour often don’t seem to differ when you compare one brand to another. But nothing could be further from the truth. One brand of wheat flour is not the other. By the way, this is true not only for wheat flour, but also for patent flour or regular flour. Breads will be of different quality when using one brand as opposed to another.
When you start to bake bread and have doubts about flour or flour, it is best to buy flour or flour that is specifically described on the package as suitable for the bread machine.
That way, when baking your own bread, you won’t get tangled up with flour or flours. Zeeland wheat flour, for example, is a type of flour that is especially suitable for making cakes, so you won’t make very nice bread with it.
Dough not high enough?
If the dough does not get high enough, you can try other flour or flour for the dough. Some do the kneading of dough in a bread machine and finish baking the bread in the oven. A common question is whether this makes any difference.
The answer to this is a resounding no, kneading in a bread machine and baking in the oven does not affect the height of the bread.
Baking bread on the timer? Let the yeast stay dry!
Are you baking with the bread machine’s timer? Then you need to make sure that the yeast stays well dry. This means that the yeast should not come into contact with the water. Here we have a method for this.
First put the water and salt in the baking tin, then add the flour or flour and make sure that this completely covers the water.
Then put instant yeast on top of this. As flour and flour are dry. In this method, you can easily bake loaves in the breadmaker without any problems.
Properly prepare all ingredients first
When baking bread, prepare all the ingredients properly first. Baking bread at home sometimes comes with its complications. Sometimes, out of all the ingredients, you suddenly forget one or two things.
Sometimes you think, oh well that one spoonful of sugar or that 10 g butter short, it won’t matter, will it? Surely I can make my bread without salt? This does matter. When you forget something when baking bread, even if it is only a little, you will notice a difference. Often in a negative sense. therefore prepare everything well in advance, so that you can properly start baking bread with the bread machine.
Don’t choose a short program
Better not choose a short program. Bake as long as possible, the better the result. Bread that is beautiful, delicious and well done with a wonderful smell and a crispy crust you usually do not bake with a short program.
Baking with the breadmaker in an hour and a half? Of course you can, but then they will not be nearly as tasty as a bread that rises longer. So better not choose a fast program, haste is seldom good.
A baking tin with two hooks?
In a baking tin with two dough hooks, place the dough hooks so that they are always facing each other. This way, the dough is kneaded a lot better and you have a better chance of your recipe succeeding.
Always let the bread cool well
It is also important to always let the bread cool well before you cut it. Just as this is the case with all the baked goods you make, such as cakes and pies. If you cut it too early it will fall apart. With homemade bread, the knife destroys the crumb.
White bread or brown bread?
White bread or brown bread? Obviously, you can bake both in the bread machine. White bread is still very popular among many people. What are actually the differences? White bread simply contains the same vitamins, fiber and minerals as any other bread, such as brown bread or whole wheat bread.
So if you bake white bread from the breadmaker, you will not be short of these. Only, white bread contains less of these nutrients as brown bread or whole wheat bread. This is why white bread is often less filling than brown bread. So white bread can certainly be called healthy, only brown bread and whole wheat bread are healthier.
Seeds or nuts in your bread, yes or no?
Seeds or nuts in your bread, should you? You see seeds and nuts in bread quite often, don’t you? Take sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds or poppy seeds, for example. Always realize that the baking tin in a bread maker has a non-stick coating.
The non-stick coating in the bread maker will wear off as time goes on. While this happens slowly, when you add harder ingredients into the dough then the baking tin of your bread maker will wear a lot faster. The non-stick coating on the baking tin is then often gone much faster than you would expect, and then the bread sticks to the baking tin.