Adventure 7: Garbanzo flour bread!

OK, so I think I have this figured out! Basically, to make a good loaf of bread, you need about 2.5 cups of flour; 1 cup of liquid; 1 tsp salt; 1 T olive oil; 2.25 tsp active dry yeast; and 1 T molasses. The liquids (minus the molasses) go into the machine first; then the salt; then the flour; then the yeast, and finally the molasses covers the yeast to help it activate. The yeast also needs wheat gluten to do its thing, so some wheat flour is necessary.

In this particular loaf, I used 1 cup of garbanzo flour together with the 2.5 cups of regular all-purpose flour. Buttermilk was the liquid I used. Setting 11 on my machine is just for the dough; so once it was done, I let the bread rise for about 20 minutes. By then I was getting really hungry, so I fired up the gas oven to 450, popped the bread in, after 5 minutes dropped the temperature to 400, and baked it for another 25 minutes.

I discovered another couple of useful tricks: Just before leaving the dough to rise, I coated it with flour. Just before popping it in the oven, I drizzled some olive oil over the loaf... It came out delicious with a nice soft brown crust. Highly recommended.

Adventure 6: Buttermilk and corn flour bread

Corn flour makes bread very heavy so it tends not to rise as well. It also gets very dry by the third day or so... I may not be using it much. But this was a pretty successful loaf. It certainly tastes good warm out of the oven! I substituted less corn meal than in my previous attempt - maybe half a cup or so; and used buttermilk as the liquid.

Adventure 5: Buttermilk bread

This was my best bread to date. It tasted great, had a perfect consistency and was really tasty right out of the oven. I substituted buttermilk for the water, but otherwise left the standard recipe unchanged. The dough rose overnight, but unfortunately it had dropped back down by the morning, and I never had time to let it rise again before baking! Nevertheless it came out great. It baked in my gas oven, at 450 for the first 5 minutes, then down to 400 for the next 25 minutes or so.

Adventure 4: Sourish doughish

Again with the same basic recipe as the first time, for this loaf I substituted 1 cup of regular flour for 1 cup of wholewheat flour. This started out with setting 3, but by the time it came for it to start cooking, the dough had not risen much at all and didn't look too great. So I decided to keep it for the next day and bake it in the oven. I put the extra tsp of yeast on the top of the bread once it had finished in the machine. But then the next day I made the cinnamon buns, so decided to try to keep this lame bread for the day after that. I put it in the fridge in a metal baking tray. I coated the top of the bread with softened butter, and put a cloth over the tray. The next day, the bread had run in the pan and had not risen at all. I took the pan out of the fridge in the morning, and baked it in the afternoon. It had still not risen much at all, so it was very thin. I baked it at 425 for 10 minutes, then at 400 for 15 minutes. Of all the bread I've made so far, this loaf has a sort of sourish taste, and except that it needs more salt, is after all the best tasting.

Adventure 3: Cinnabuns!

Using the same basic recipe, but adding an extra Tbs of molasses, I decided to try my hand at cinnamon buns. I used setting 11= dough. The extra 1Tbs of molasses made the dough rather runny. Once it was done, I added quite a lot of flour (by the handful - maybe 3 or 4 hands full) to get a more solid dough. I kneaded it by hand, and kept it overnight in a metal dish covered with a cloth. In the morning, I divided the dough into 3 parts, and for each, rolled out a dough snake by hand, flatted it (also by hand), then poured over some melted butter, plenty of cinnamon, and not enough molasses (about 1 Tbs per bun). Next I rolled up each bun, and cooked them on their sides, not the usual way.

Adventure 2: Corn meal bread

Next I used the same settings but substituted 1 cup of white flour for 1 cup of yellow corn meal. The bread should have risen for longer... next time I will bake it in the oven after making the dough in the machine.

Adventure 1

Using a basic recipe from the breadman website, but for some other bread machine, I made my very first loaf of bread. Here is the recipe, more or less:
0.75 cup + 2 Tbs warm water
1 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt
2.25 cups general purpose flour
1.25 tsp active dry yeast
1 Tbs molasses
Setting: 3 = Basic 1.5lb loaf
Once the machine beeped, I added another tsp of yeast.