Years ago, I used to bake my bread right in the breadmaker pan; however, after doing this several times and washing the pan, eventually the seal cracked and the pan became useless. The seal is not supposed to become wet. At the time, the machine was still pretty new and it was costly to replace the whole machine. We chose to order a new breadmaker pan which was not cheap either, but cheaper than replacing the whole machine.
From that time forward, I chose to only use the dough cycle on my breadmaker. We preferred the bread baked in an oven anyway because of it's smaller size to fit into the toaster. We also felt that by baking the dough right in the breadmaker pan, the heat eventually caused the seal to become dry and brittle. Since then, we never used any other cycle on the machine other than the dough cycle. It's been many years now and the seal is still going strong.
Eliminating bread baking in the machine led to my trying to rush through the tedious process of bread making each time I wanted homemade bread. Eventually, I started cutting corners and I discovered the quickest way to whip up a loaf of bread or making any other type of dough.
It really doesn't matter what bread recipe is used, but here's the gist of it. For my breadmaker, all liquid ingredients go in the bottom of the pan. A layer of flour covers the liquid ingredients. On the flour layer is placed any other grains and remaining dry ingredients. Your breadmaker may be slightly different ingredient order, so refer to your user's manual.
Select the dough cycle on the breadmaker. When cycle is complete, place bread in greased loaf pan. Raise in warm oven, then bake. It's that simple. Let's get started.
First, if the recipe requires eggs, put that in the bottom of the breadmaker pan.
Grab a large microwaveable bowl and place all your liquid ingredients (except the eggs, of course, since we don't want to cook them) in the bowl. Put the bowl in the microwave and heat until very warm to hot. I usually figure about one minute for each cup of liquid. The bread recipe I used called for butter, honey, cottage cheese and water.
When finished heating the liquids, if you want, you can mix them together.
Or just pour into the bottom of the breadmaker pan along with the eggs.
Now it's time for the dry ingredients. I added about a cup of flour on top of the liquid ingredients. I like oats in my bread and lately have been using a lot of different types of grains and seeds. So I placed some oats in my Ninja chopper to grind them up.
Next I measured out about a quarter cup each of flaxseed, quinoa and bulgar. I've never used bulgar before but had some in my freezer so thought I'd give it a try. I placed them in the chopper to grind and then added it to the breadmaker pan. I also threw in about a quarter cup of sunflower nuts since my husband and I really like them in bread. Basically I replaced a few cups of flour with other grains for the total amount needed.
Once the dry ingredients are added, measure out the remaining ingredients such as the yeast and salt. Select the dough cycle on the breadmaker and then start the machine. Continue to add flour or oats or whatever your recipe calls for until the dough is thickened.
Depending on the size of your recipe, you may need to help the breadmaker along with the mixing by using a butter knife and running the knife in a circular motion as you add more flour. Keep adding a little more flour until the dough moves away from the sides of the pan.
Once the cycle is through, drop the dough onto the table. If your recipe is for two loaves, cut the dough in half and place each into a greased loaf pan.
No need to press the dough out and roll into a loaf. This is where I save time and just plop it into the pan. I suppose if I were going to take the bread to a special event or enter it at the fair, I would take the extra time and make it look pretty. But around here, we're more concerned about the taste and how fast we get to eat it!
Luckily, I have a warmer setting on my oven. So I choose the lowest setting and place the pans in the oven. I only leave the warmer on for about twenty minutes and then shut it off and leave the bread inside to raise. If you don't have an oven warmer, you could just put your oven on the lowest setting to warm it up and then shut it off and place the loaves in for raising.
Once they're raised, bake them for the allotted time. Remove from pans and place on a cooling rack.
We've never really waited long enough for the bread to cool since we fight for the crust as soon as it's on the rack!
Here's a close up of the texture. Mmmmm ...
Once we've had our fill and the bread is thoroughly cooled down, I slice it up, bag them and put them in the freezer. Then whenever we want a slice of bread, we pull one from the bag and pop it in the toaster for a wonderful piece of homemade toast!
Can't get much easier than that!
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