Sorry, the title is misleading, there’s nothing here about circuses – I’m crazy for good bread (okay, I’m crazy for good circuses too, but that will have to wait). So lets talk about bread, bread machines, and my bread recipe.
The loaf of bread I just made.
I hear a lot of people with the same story: “I had a bread-machine once…made bread for a month, now it’s sitting in the garage…or maybe I gave it away…” The reasons vary, sometimes people just grow weary of operating the thing, but mostly people seem to not be hugely impressed with the quality of the end product – it’s “too light and fluffy”, “too dense”, “too crumbly”, or “too rubbery”.
The thing is, like most other recipes, you’ve got to tweak bread quite a lot to get what you want out of it. It also pays to start with a good machine; I like Panasonic’s sturdy cast-aluminium baking tin, and the results the machine produces. Lastly, you need to work out the right size loaf for your machine. Most machines, though they claim to be able to produce a wide range of loaf sizes, seem to have an optimal size (generally towards the low end of the range, in my experience) that produces an even texture throughout and a good crust all over.
I recommend starting with a good bread-mix; save plain flour based recipes for when you’ve learned the ropes a little. Bread mixes tend to produce very light, elastic bread, which is a good starting point. From that point, I work with a few basic tweaks:
- Reduce the amount of water if the loaf seems to collapse as it cools
- Substitute plain flour for some of the bread-mix to produce a denser, less fluffy loaf
- Substitute rolled oats for some of the bread-mix to produce a less stringy, more crumbly loaf (if you add them at the start, the oats will be completely pulverised in the kneading process)
Using the above tweaks, I arrived at the following recipe for my every-day bread:
- 325g Lauke wholemeal bread mix
- 50g plain wholemeal flour
- 50g rolled oats
- 1 tsp dried yeast
- 325mL water (or 300mL if I want a firmer loaf that will be easier to cut while it’s hot)
Take two minutes to bung it in the machine before bed, set the timer for breakfast-time, and hit the sack: couldn’t be easier. I took some to work once and they’re hooked; now if I don’t bring it to Friday morning-tea, there’s trouble.
Okay, I feel bad about the misleading title, here’s Australia’s National Institute of Circus Arts in action (click through for the full set):
NICA - At First Sight
