bread I baked

[Herbsman.]

I've heard that adding a crushed vitamin c tablet helps act as a preservative. You might also try an egg and milk based bread - they seem to keep for a long time.

Or you could just use a bit of citric acid...

 

[pembrokestephen]

Could you explain the bit in brackets please?

Tate the weight of flour in grammes, divide it by 2. Then add 25. Add another 25 or so if you're making brown bread. That number is the amount of water in ml you'll need. Fine tune as necessary.

 

[pogofish]

Have to say, that's not my experience. I used to buy their strong white flour because it's very cheap, but it doesn't rise nearly as well in my breadmaker as other brands I've used

It may not rise as well but I do find it more consistant, especially in a non-centrally heated house in winter. Most better quality flowrs don't seem to cope with the lower temp as well.

 

[Greta]

Mmm, yeah, I try not to sit in judgement on anyone who goes down the breadmaker route, but I'm not convinced that a breadmaker can turn a brickmaker into a baker, and there's that old single-use-appliance thing, especially as breadmakers are quite big, in terms of the space they take up in kitchens.

I guess that if it works for you, it's worth going for. But I think, of the people I know, that I could count the number of them who happily and successfully use a breadmaker on a regular basis on the fingers of one head...

Most people find the idea of them brilliant because they love the concept of fresh bread in the morning, house smelling like a baker's shop, etc. But I've known so many people who use them and achieve variable - to be euphemistic about it - results, with some abandoning the thing in disgust while others gamely plod on trying to convince themselves that bread you have to cut with an axe is still nice, just because it's home-made, etc. There's also the whole false premise idea that breadmaking is hard, time-consuming, etc. It's the same way that ready meals are sold - first convince your punter that making cauliflower cheese is nearly as hard as putting a man on the moon, then whip out the solution to all the problems they didn't know they had - shazam, instant just-add-water cauliflower cheese straight from the cupboard to the table, yeah, sorry, it does taste a bit like plastic, that'd be the plastic in it, and, well, we had to put 10g of salt in because it tasted of plastic-made-of-shit until we did that, but, let's face it, would you rather eat this or put a man on the moon? Etc.

Anyway, I don't want to put tank girl off her breadmaking endeavours with excessive ranting, so I'll leave it there

I use a breadmaker about 3 to 5 times a week but it has taken a fair bit of experimenting with flours, yeasts and recipes to get consistent results.

 

[Chairman Meow]

I've heard that adding a crushed vitamin c tablet helps act as a preservative. You might also try an egg and milk based bread - they seem to keep for a long time.

Thanks for this tip - I'll definitely be having a go at this.