First bread machine use - uh-oh, overflow!

[MommyPenguin]

Okay, thanks!  I'll try that tonight.  I found a bread pan, so I'll give it a try with making the dough and then having it bake in the oven.  I'll see how that works out in terms of effort.  If I'm going to plan on making bread regularly at home, it needs to be something I can stay on top of.  If it takes forever to get the dough out of the machine or I have to monitor the oven constantly, it might be a problem.  So hopefully it will come out easily and I can quickly figure out the golden amount of time to cook it for.    I'll let you know how it goes!  It would be *awesome* if the dough came out cleanly enough that I could maybe make a second loaf immediately, so that I could kind of mass produce them.  Although I could only find one bread pan (one ended up getting too rusty after many moves).

[VorFemme]

If you cook the dough in the oven, my maternal grandmother made an accidental discovery when she had to shut off the oven halfway through baking bread to take grandpa to the ER.

A preheated oven that has been turned off halfway through the baking time will remain hot enough to finish baking the bread (especially in the summer time in Texas) AND when you pull the bread out at the normal time, it will have a much thinner, more tender crust.  Something between artisan bakery bread and "name brand bread in the plastic wrapper".

[Sophia]

You might also look into whether or not your maker has a "crust" setting.  Mine has Light, Medium, Dark.  I think light bakes at a lower temp.  Baking bread in the oven is wonderful, but it would be nice to have an easy back-up plan when you get busy with the kids.

I bought mine for $5 at Goodwill and found the manual online.  So, you might look online for the manual. 

If you find a bread routine that works for you, you might look into buying bulk yeast and keeping it in the fridge.  Price of yeast can add up. 

[MommyPenguin]

It does have a crust setting and I did have it set to light.  While the crust is definitely light in color, it's still thick and chewy.  I know it was like that in the bread machine my parents had when I was growing up, so maybe that's just an aspect of bread machine cooking.

The yeast I have is actually in a little jar, rather than separate little packs.  Is that what people mean by buying in bulk, or do they mean *big* jars or something?  It's a little bigger than a baby food jar in size.

My husband also suggested that, if this really works and I'm doing it regularly, we could get a few more bread machines.  Then I could do a lot of batches at once.

Anyway, I'm currently doing a 1.5 pound loaf.  I hope it works!  It's been a bit... interesting.  I made the dough in the machine last night, but it was too late to cook it.  So even though it had risen in the machine, I set it up in the bread pan and put it in a warm but off oven to rise overnight.  Well, it rose, but it really liked one side of the bread pan, so it sort of overflowed over that side!  So I had to scoop it back in, as it was hanging on the side of the pan and wouldn't have cooked well, but then I lost the benefit of the rising.  So this morning I fixed it *back* up in the bread pan and am trying to get it to rise just enough to bake but not so much that it overflows everywhere.  I am not really sure how well this will work... it will have risen three times!  Is that bad?  Next time I'll make it during the day and keep an eye on it so it doesn't overflow to begin with.  I'm going to try the "turn the oven off halfway" technique when I bake it to see how that works.

[Sophia]

You should have put it the dough in the fridge.  It will still rise only extremely extremely slowly.  You put it in the fridge and then the next day you take it out and put it on the counter until it doubles. 

Keep an eye on Goodwill type places.  Lots of people donate their bread machine wedding presents after a couple of uses.  Just make sure that the turning blade is in there. 

I believe it is possible to buy bigger quantities really cheaply at Sam's or Costco.  (It was mentioned in the Tightwad Gazette)

[Outdoor Girl]

Putting the bread on for a third rise won't hurt it at all.  It might even make it lighter in texture.  But as Sophia suggested, if it happens again, put the loaf in the fridge.

I've had my Kitchenaid mixer for over 20 years now, using it for icing and bread, primarily.  I've never had an issue with it.  I make 8 loaves of bread at a time (because that's what fits in my oven), which is 4 batches.  So if you have a Kitchenaid, as opposed to a cheaper model mixer, you should be fine to use the mixer for your bread.  8 loaves take me about 4 hours, start to finish, using my oven set at 100 F to proof the yeast and the dough.

I've had trouble buying bulk yeast lately because Costco doesn't carry it any more and I haven't seen other places with it.  So I'm just buying the little jars, as opposed to the packets, too.  But it sounds like you are going to be making a lot more bread than I do so you might want to see if you can find a bulk source.

I don't have a bread machine because if I did, I'd eat the whole loaf in a day or two!

[MommyPenguin]

So, I am currently eating lunch (pbj) with the results!  It worked out okay.  So I did a 1.5 pound loaf in the bread machine just to dough, then it got to rise a bunch of times, as I mentioned.  Well, I think it rose way too high for the height of my bread pan.  Got awfully close to the top of my oven!  I think 1.5 pounds may be too large a loaf for the size of bread pan I have.  I tried turning the oven off halfway through.  The verdict?  The top part of the loaf that extended above the bread pan made a pretty hard, crunchy crust, much thicker and crunchier than I'd like.  The rest of it that stayed in the bread pan had very little, light crust, but the bread ended up doughy in the middle.


So, I have a 1-lb. loaf currently working its way towards dough in the bread machine.  I'm going to try baking this one in the oven as well.  But I'm going to lower the rack so I keep the bread farther from the top of the oven, and I'm going to hope that maybe a 1-lb. loaf will stay lower in the bread pan.  Maybe then I will get that lighter crust!  I'm probably going to have to let it rise again once I get it in the bread pan, because I'm not really sure how to transfer it from the bread machine to the bread pan without it dropping.  We'll see!

[Outdoor Girl]

It may also have a crunchier crust because of the kind of bread it is - I think you said it had oatmeal in it.  The crust will also soften if you don't eat the bread right away (difficult, I know) and store it in a plastic bag.

Most bread pans are geared to a 1 lb loaf so that should definitely work better.

My bread pans are kind of special - they used to be head cheese pans!  They are a little narrower and have higher sides on them so they make a really nice loaf of bread.

[MommyPenguin]

Okay, so I finally managed to make a loaf that cooked all the way through without the crust getting *too* crisp.  It's still crisper than I would have liked, but... oh, well.  It was a little funny, though.  So, about half of the bread rose above the edges of the bread pan, and half was below the edges.  When I checked the cake, the top part (outside of the cake pan) was getting a bit crisp.  But when I took the bread out and put it on a pan to look at it, I realized the part that had been in the cake pan really wasn't cooked all the way through yet and would still be doughy inside.

So... I flipped the bread upside down in the bread pan and put it back in for about 10 more minutes.  It worked perfectly.  The bread is cooked through without overdoing the top part anymore.  I'm sure there's a better solution, but at least this worked for now.

Do I need a larger bread pan, so it doesn't rise up out of it so much?  Or... is there another way of fixing it, so it cooks through without too much crust?  The bread is really, really good, so I don't *really* want to change the recipe if possible.  I used a higher proportion of whole wheat flour this time, and it was still good.

[Outdoor Girl]

See if you can find pans with higher sides.  The loaf pans I've seen are great for loaf cakes/quick breads but I don't like them for yeast bread.  Antique shops might have the head cheese pans, depending on where you live.  If you are anywhere near farm country, you might be in luck.

Another option would be to make rolls.  Grease a couple of 8" cake pans, take bits of dough about the size of an extra large egg and put them in the pans, nestled up to each other but not jammed in.  Then let them rise.  It'll take 1/2 to 2/3 of the amount of time to rise that your loaf did.  Then bake as you would the loaf.  When you tap on the top of the loaf or the rolls, it should sound hollow to tell you it is cooked through.  The advantage to the rolls is that it would minimize the amount of crust.

[Sophia]

Or you could try putting less than normal in the pan and covering with foil. 
We prefer a good solid crust, so I can't give you too much advice on minimizing it.

[PastryGoddess]

Are you still making a 1.5 times batch of dough?  Do you proof your bread before you put it in the oven?  I second the idea to make rolls from some extra dough.  You can also freeze a little bit of dough for later if you don't want rolls.

[magicdomino]

King Arthur Flour sells yeast by the pound bag:

http://search.kingarthurflour.com/search?p=Q&asug=&af=type%3Aproducts&w=yeast

I keep some in the refrigerator, and the rest in the freezer. 

[Sophia]

ooooh, that looks great.  Why did I never think to look there?  I've even been to the website. 
And, "cake enhancer" and "bread salt" ... Who would have thought?

----

On a related note, pizza dough comes out nice from the bread machine.  You have to remember to let it rest after you divide it out into round lumps.  Don't remember what it does, but the rest improves the handling. 

[Chip2]

Out of curiosity, what's the advantage of doing the bread from scratch?  I do have a Kitchenaid, but while it technically has a dough hook, my husband has asked me firmly *not* to ever attempt to use it to knead bread, because of the amount of wear it puts on the machine.  I was hoping that with the bread machine, I could just measure and dump in the ingredients, then go do other stuff (I homeschool and I have four children, so doing a lot of kneading and such every day wouldn't be likely to happen).  I even thought about maybe making some pre-measured bags of the dry ingredients that I could just dump in every day and then add the wet ingredients on top.  Hmm, I guess that wouldn't work with the yeast needing to be refrigerated now that it's open.

The yeast is actually very fresh, as I just bought it last night!  It's one of those little jars of Fleischmann's and it's actually "bread machine" yeast.  I thought that would be a good thing.  I'm a little new at this, though!

I could definitely try to do 1.5 times the recipe, it just makes the math a little more complicated, especially when it comes to that 1/3 cup.    But it does sound reasonable, so I guess I'll try it!

I have a 20+ year old Kitchenaid that I use to knead bread dough all the time and it's still going strong. The only problem is that larger batches of dough try to climb the dough hook and crawl out of the bowl. Still, it beats kneading the stuff by hand and I think the texture ends up being superior to what I get from my (unused in years) bread machine.

The problem with baking bread in the bread machine is that when the baking cycle starts the dough is in a cold oven. The heating process cooks the outer layer of dough before getting hot enough to bake the interior so you end up with a thicker, heavier crust. (Not necessarily a bad thing, but maybe not what you're looking for.) With a preheated oven the exterior isn't exposed to the heat as long so you'll get a thinner crust.

The premeasured bags of dry ingredients are a great idea. Go ahead and prep them and add the yeast to them and keep the bags in the fridge so the wee beasties stay in hibernation.