Breadmaker recipes

I have borrowed my mother's breadmaker (an unsuccessful present which my brother and sister and I bought her 13 years ago. It seemed a good idea at the time, but after I had showed her how to use it, it went back in the box and didn't see the light of day until I asked if I could borrow it a few weeks ago!)
Does anyone else use a breadmaker? And if so, which recipes have you found work well? The breadmaker had a recipe book in with it, but for some reason the recipes use quite a lot of salt and an awful lot of sugar (1 teaspoon and salt and 4 teaspoons of sugar for a medium loaf). I'm quite hooked on using it - so far I've tried a brown loaf , a white loaf and a packet mix, but would be grateful for a less sweet loaf recipe. I'm assuming the sugar is there for a reason (activating the yeast?)

We have been using a Panasonic for many years. It has had several new paddles, pans, and bodge repairs, but the newer models don't seem to get such good reviews, so I hang on to it.

I use the recipies that were in the book that came with it. From memory, something like:

1 tsp easy blend yeast.
1lb 2oz plain flour
1 tbl powdered milk
1 tbl sugar
1 oz butter
1 tsp salt
350 ml water

That's the basic bread. The Italian programme uses less sugar (1 tsp) but is very sensitive to flour quality, but makes nice toast:

1 tsp easy blend yeast.
1lb 2oz strong white flour
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 tbl olive iol
350 ml water

The French programmes don't use sugar at all, just yeast, flour, butter, salt and water, but are very "inflated". The spiced fruit loaf is very nice, particularly for toasing in front of the woodburner

I can post some more of the recipies if you like, but they are probably matched to the breadmaker's programmes somewhat, so may be less sucessful if your machine does different kneading/resting/temperature etc. The book does warn against skimping on the salt IIRC, and on the occasions I've forgot to add it, the loaf looks OK but tastes boring.

Thank you CH - that recipe sounds very similar to the one from the recipe book from the breadmaker, which is also a Panasonic. I'm really grateful to you for posting it because the amounts in my book are in cups, but US cups which I have failed to buy in any local shops, so it's brilliant to have the amount in pounds and ounces. However it's the tablespoon of sugar which I don't like - it just tastes too sweet and wrong to me. I like the idea of the Italian loaf, and I'm sure Mr D (whose family originally came from Piedmonte) would like it too.

Dandelion - we bit the bullet a couple of years ago and replaced our old Panasonic with a newer model. The recipes are a little different with much less sugar and I now find the old recipes too sweet as well. I will post one recipe here and if it works and you like it, I can photocopy all of them and send them to you.

For a large, half wholemeal loaf:
250g (9oz) wholemeal flour, 250g (9oz) white flour, 1.5 tsp sugar, 1.25 tsp salt, 25g (1oz) butter, 370ml water, 1 tsp yeast.
Bake on the 5 hour wholemeal programme.

When we first got our bread maker I was horrified by the amount of sugar in the recipe. I commented on this to a colleague and she said ‘oh you don’t need to put as much as that in” so we didn’t. I can’t remember how much we used now (we don’t have it anymore) but it was only about a teaspoon to feed the yeast

Oh thank you FB and JG - that's really helpful. I'll try another recipe at the weekend.

My main recipe, from the Panasonic booklet, is the 400g version of freebird's. It only uses 1 tsp of sugar and one of salt and I reckon that divided among 12 to 13 slices is not a lot!
I made my hot cross bun dough in the breadmaker, saves a sticky mess on my hands and my work surface. Chelsea buns too. Trouble is we ate too many so I had to desist!!

Oops, mine (or my mum's...) isn't Panasonic, it's a Morphy Richards. (I should have got off my backside to look earlier!) Anyway, I've just been back to look at the recipe in the book which came with the breadmaker, and it does have a breathtakingly large amount of sugar compared to the recipes you've all kindly given me. For a 2lb white loaf which uses 1 1/2 cups of flour (which I think is about 400gr) the amount of sugar given is three whopping great TABLESPOONS!! I've checked the other recipes to see if it's just a misprint but they all have huge amounts of sugar. In fact the wholemeal loaf uses 4 tablespoons of brown sugar. I've stupidly bought too much bread this weekend, so we don't need any more but I'm looking forward to trying one of these more normal recipes.

Looking forward to hearing about your experiments, Dandelion :-)

I also replaced my ancient breadmaker fairly recently and noticed that the basic recipes had reduced from a tablespoon of sugar to a teaspoon.
I like to use mine to do dough for rolls to keep in the freezer.  I always intend doing something a bit fancy but it's in use so much (Mr P has a serious toast habit) it's not often available.  As the newer one has a dispenser I often put seeds into the mix.  I've also done hot cross (not) bun dough and Chelsea buns.  Malt loaf is nice too or a spiced fruit loaf.  It does a good focaccia too.

Sounds as if you have the same breadmaker as I do, Ploshkin. Is it a Panasonic?
I use the seed dispenser when the mood takes me.
Hadn't thought of making dough to freeze for rolls, that's a great idea.
What I like most about it is that you know exactly what's in the bread.

It is a Panasonic.  I had one for 15 years but it started to get a bit wayward and I had to chisel the bread out of the pan.  A new pan is about half the cost of a machine so I got a new one.  It's good to have the dispenser - I could never be bothered with waiting for the raisin beep.
  I make and cook the rolls and freeze them, not the dough if that's what it sounded like.

Dandelion wrote: For a 2lb white loaf which uses 1 1/2 cups of flour (which I think is about 400gr) the amount of sugar given is three whopping great TABLESPOONS!! I've checked the other recipes to see if it's just a misprint but they all have huge amounts of sugar.

Dandelion - despite your checking to see if your recipe is a misprint, I can't help thinking that maybe all the recipes in your book are misprints. After all, 3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon, which is much more in line with the recipes from my old book. I would suggest, in the first instance, that you translate all the amounts of sugar from tablespoons to teaspoons and see how you get on.

The reason I suggest this is that you might find the quantities of liquid rather different as your bread maker is not Panasonic (and the recipes we have been posting are from the Panasonic book). The liquid varies, dependent on the length of the programme - a longer, slower programme tends to need more liquid. I think you are more likely to have success by using the recipes given with your own machine, at least until you are more used to it, and just assume the sugar should be teaspoons and not tablespoons.

That makes perfect sense

Apart from the sugar debacle, the other thing which was difficult with the Morphy Richards recipes was that they gave the flour in cups, but US cups. I tried to buy myself a set but neither Amazon or Lakeland came up with any. There are so many dire warnings in the recipe book about how to measure the ingredients, and not trying to wing it, but it's a bit difficult when the measure they included with the breadmaker has disappeared. But I've just found a brilliant conversion chart - good old Doves Farm. I'm including a link in case anyone else has ever wondered...
https://www.dovesfarm.co.uk/hints-tips/cheat-sheets/us-cups-conversion-table

Handy table, thanks, Dandelion.

Made any bread yet?

I have!! I've followed Freebird's advice and used the original recipe, just adapting the amount of salt and sugar. The Doves Farm table helped immensely, and I was able to accurately measure all ingredients. Instread of 4 tablespoons of sugar I used one teaspoon, and I halved the salt to one teaspoon as well. I've made two loaves this weekend, one white and one brown. I'm still making rookie errors - the brown didn't turn out as well as the white, probably because I realised as I turned it on (and saw that it wasn't mixing properly) that I had forgotten to put the paddle onto the central spindle, so had to grope around in the dough firstly finding the paddle, and second trying to slip it on to the spindle, locating the flat side. I need to make bread regularly so that the process becomes second nature.

We've made bread with no paddle before now! At least you got yours in before it was too late.

Did the brown have longer cooking time? A basic white is 4 hours in mine, a basic part-wholemeal (50% or more) is better on the 5 hour programme.

I think the Morphy Richards (I nearly typed 'Massey Ferguson'!!) only has a three hour programme as its longest one. I noticed that it doesn't have a recipe for wholemeal bread, just brown/wheatmeal

A Massey Ferguson breadmaker would be an interesting sight

Having now had to replace the old bread maker with a new one (Panasonic this time - I listened to your corporate advice!) I have another question. One of my aims for the week was to learn how to use the timer on the breadmaker, which I managed to do successfully, and have just removed the loaf. My question is: do other people find that bread made using the timer rises less? It was set before I went to bed, so the ingredients were in the tin for ten hours before it was ready. The yeast is dried, probably reaching the end of its shelf life, but worked absolutely fine the day before yesterday.

I use the timer normally, usually more like 8 hours though. Can't say I've spotted a pattern. Old yeast can have an effect, but IME by far the biggest variable is the flour. The huge sack I bought from Morrison's is useless - whatever you do, you get a loaf like a housebrick. The Italian programme is the most sensitive. Waitrose strong bread flour usually works well for me. Various flours from the farm shop have all been OK too. Exports will no doubt talk about protein content and Hagberg falling number.

I've probably mentioned this beforre, but British flour tends not to be very strong, French flour more so. This accounts for the odd situation that we export about the same amount to France as we import - French flour makes better bread, ours makes better patisserie

Oh that's interesting - perhaps it is the flour as I bought it from a farm shop and it was the first time I had used it.

Unlikely to be the timer programme, Dandelion .... unless yours is a machine where the yeast sits in the pan with the other ingredients. There are normally instructions for the order ingredients should be put in, so the yeast a) stays dry until it is needed, and b) doesn't come into direct contact with the salt, whilst waiting for the timer to start. However, my Panasonic is newish, and the yeast is put into a separate dispenser, so am assuming yours will be the same.

CH is right about the flour being the main variable, although if I know my yeast is getting a bit tired, I increase the quantity, sometimes by half as much again. I have also only just learnt that keeping yeast in the fridge increases its life.

The yeast does go into the pan with all the other ingredients. With the previous breadmaker, the water and butter went in first with the dry ingredients on top (keeping the salt, sugar and yeast in different corners of the pan.) I had assumed this was the correct method for all breadmakers, so I was surprised when a few weeks ago I actually read ALL the instructions, and realised that yeast went in first, flour on top of this, salt and sugar, then water and butter last. What I might do is next time I use the timer, go back to the old way of doing it, as I think it's easier to keep the dry ingredients separate. I'll just have to experiment and see!