Dead Bread...

General Cooking tips

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Motherwoman
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Oh dear, I put a loaf to go in the bread machine this morning and I've just removed a rather sad looking doughy lump of a loaf with large flour lumps stuck on the side. I rather think the paddle has ceased to paddle. I had my suspicions over the weekend when I put dough on but that was recoverable when I tipped the dough out.

It is a panasonic machine and is years old so doesn't owe me anything. Certainly not worth trying to repair.

So any suggestions for reliable bread machines around at the moment? I do mostly plain loaves and dough but have toyed with the idea of a machine that does jam as well, anyone tried these?

All comments gratefully received.

MW
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retropants
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honestly, I would stick with panasonic. their new bread machine range has a much smaller footprint than the older ones. I'm not expecting my panasonic to last much longer :/
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alan refail
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A pair of hands - an oven at 200C - guaranteed success :wink:
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retropants
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not enough hours in the day Alan! :lol:
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John
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Hello MW
On the Panasonic there is a belt drive between the motor and the paddle. Its likely that this has snapped. They are available and easy to fit from the base of the machine - I always keep a spare. If the motor has gone the machine is probably not worth repairing.

John
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Motherwoman
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Hmm... I might investigate the belt, it made noises but didn't wobble about so the motor may be OK. Other than that I think I'll go down the Panasonic route again, this one has been so good.

Hands are great when time and wrist joints allow. I'm afraid that 30 years of professional horticultural has left its mark on my joints. :( They give out on me. With the machine I can load in 5 minutes and then get on with the paying work whilst it does its thing!

MW
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Motherwoman
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Well here's a turnip for the books as Baldric would say, I checked out the belt under the machine and it was OK so I turned the machine on and the cog bit in the bottom moved so I put the pot and paddle in and that went round as well. So what was the problem?

OK who thought it was a good idea to put the expiry date for the bread flour on the underside of the bag? Hmm. Come on own up! It was only just out of date, Oct 2014. So I used a fresh bag of flour and a new packet of yeast to be on the safe side and I had a decent loaf.

Who'd have thought it would make so much difference. Does anyone know what happens to flour as it ages? Something with the gluten?

Lesson for the day is correctly rotate your bags of flour. :oops:

MW
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MW We love our Panasonic, the first few times we used it we used the normal :shock: 5hour recipe, after that we now use the 100% wholemeal quick :lol: 3 hour recipe. It comes out perfectly every time. Just wondering if the paddle was free moving on yours, our previous breadmaker's paddle used to stick as it got older and the bread stopped coming out properly.

I always transfer the flour to containers and put a sticky label showing the use by date, only because we once bought a bag of flour from M*******s and left it in our cupboard. When I came to use it it was full of weevils. So I always do this now. (my cupboard was clean by the way).

I also always put the open date and use by date on my tin of quick yeast which I keep in the fridge because I forget when I opened it and it says on the tin use in 4 months :?
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Ricard with an H
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I'm so glad we have a bread baking fraternity and whilst I don't use my P-Sonic often, I do use it. And I had the odd dead-dough situation and for no explainable reason much the same as you.

I love the P-Sonic because I can make dough to pour out for ciabatta and the likes, the non-stick in the bread-pan is fantastic.

I don't know why I had a failure either though I was using pre-packed bakers yeast at the time, the sort you get in 7 gram packets whereas I prefer to judge the amount of yeast I use so generally buy a packet of 'Doves'.

A few years back I would never introduce yeast unless I'd proven it, to be honest it's so reliable that it's hardly worth the effort.

New News.

I finally mastered sourdough rye bread though only as far as 70% rye and 30% strong white. Yes it's a black art and having a reliable mother culture helps. What I haven't managed is a good freeform loaf and to be honest I don't often see a good freeform rye unless they hid some unmentionables in there.

If you're struggling with sourdough starter read-up on the Detmoler three stage system.
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Ricard with an H
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Hello Mrs MW.

As you are aware (Or not) I am a prolific bread-baker and amongst the fancy (Black-art) of sourdough and flours you never heard of I do bake common-or-garden white and always use the Panasonic machine for the dough.

It means I can get on with things and target early afternoon for stage two.

I have twice had a dead lump of dough, once it was down to old yeast and the second more recent time it was a mystery I put down to the machine failing in it's duties but on an electronic fault rather than a mechanical fault because the Panasonic has worked flawlessly ever since.

Is the heating coil working ? If the coil is knackered you'll get a cold environment. Test it by putting the machine into dough only and the coil will bring the internal up to a suitable temperature.

I don't think old flour was to blame, you would still get a dough if the yeast has something to turn into sugars. I tried cheap flours and expensive organic flour, organic tastes better thoughts a matter of opinion, the cheap flours still make a nice loaf if you get your quantities right and the baking.

Try it again is my advise and after using fresh flour do a loaf with old flour just to prove a point. Old-old flour might have creatures living in it but it'll still give you bread. Might taste like poo as well.

Always use a little Vitamin C, it ads acidity and the yeast loves it. Just a pinch.
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My husband is the keen breadmaker in our house and we fairly recently bought the Panosonic automatic model which he's very pleased with. This one does make jam apparently although we haven't tried it yet.
As an aside, I find the one problem with these breadmakers is that you never get a really crisp crust which makes slicing the bread really difficult, especially if you want to make sandwiches.
My husband has made various different kinds of bread but what he often now does is make the dough in the breadmaker,let it rise in the airing cupboard and bake it in the oven in tins or loose. this isn't a fully automated process doing it this way but we reckon you get a far firmer crust which makes it easier to slice.
I think you probably have to be a household which eats a lot of bread to really justify the cost of a breadmaker but everybody I've spoken to reckons the Panasonic models are the best.
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John
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To get a crisp loaf from your breadmaker you need to pop it in a hot oven on the middle shelf (gas mk 6, electric ?) for 10-12 minutes as soon as the machine has finished - I give my loaves 6 min on each side. A bit longer if you like a really dark crust.

John
The Gods do not subtract from the allotted span of men’s lives, the hours spent fishing Assyrian tablet
What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning Werner Heisenberg
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Ricard with an H
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The flavour is in the crust and more colour means more flavour, this is why all my bread is baked in the oven and always free-form in the case of store-bought yeast bread. Rolling the dough in sesame seeds or other seeds adds flavour but makes a mess. :D

Get the oven as high as it'll go for the first ten minutes, you may have to loose a little heat for the remaining bake time if you don't like over-baked bread.

Thanks for that machine tip John, I'll try that.
How are you supposed to start and maintain a healthy lifestyle if it completely removes a wine lover’s reason to live?
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