Epic fail

[jdfoxinc]

I bought a toastmaster bread machine because of the butter churn option. It has worked very well churning butter and baking various breads . So today I tried baking whole wheat raisin nut bread. Instructions said to use option 7 which has a pause before the last punch down where you put the raisins nutanix and cinnamon in the hopper and the machine is supposed to mix them in. It just sat there. So I pulled the dough getting the added ingredients all over and attempted to roll out the dough then roll the nuts etc. in a spiral loaf and put it back in the machine. The machine went straight to bake cycle. The loaf fell apart scattering nuts etc. is heavy and doughy. If it had held together it could be a door stop.

[Winger Ed.]

Bread making at any level of the game can be frustrating to say the least.

I've made some before that the dogs didn't want.

[mattw]

Yummmm homemade bread. My wife makes some kind almost every weekend, sometimes sweet rolls, sometimes basic yeast, sometimes cinnamon rolls.

[clum553946]

Bread making at any level of the game can be frustrating to say the least.

I've made some before that the dogs didn't want.

Lol, I know that story all too well! I eventually found out that my pizza dough recipe works well for bread with a little more yeast & 1 more rising.

[MaryB]

I do free form loaves on my baking stone... use a cookie sheet underneath I add a little water to for steam so it gets a super crunchy crust.

[Bulldogger]

In my experience every machine is a bit different, and I have come to believe that weighing ingredients to account for the humidity (water content) of the flour is also important. But again it's each machine/cycle to be learned as its quirks become understood.
I say keep at it!
BDGR

[gbrown]

I have an old Wellbilt from the 80s or 90s that mom gave to us when she got tired of it. I've made a thousand loaves in that thing and using the pause cycle, made dinner rolls and cinnamon rolls. Worked great every time. Only issue I have is that it produces a cylindrical loaf. Of course, you can use the pause cycle and divide the dough into traditional loaf pans for the final rising. We haven't used it much in the past 10 years. The first year we had it, I gained 10 lbs. LOL As Bulldogger stated, every machine is a bit different. I'm +1 with "Keep at it."

[Shiloh]

Ive made low rise whole grain breads that didn't rise at all. Turned out like hardtack.
No worries French onion and other soups sorted them right up.

Shiloh

[MaryB]

Whole grain is going ot be dense no matter what you do... unless you buy the dough conditioner chemicals the bog bakeries use. King Arthur flour carries them...

[jdfoxinc]

Tried making sweet dough the other day. Turns out the machine decided to die right at that point of the cycle. The timer runs and the heating element turns on and off but the motor driving the paddle is kaput.

[Idaho Mule]

I had a pretty colossal wreck the other day with a loaf of sourdough. My own recipe, but I have been trying to go with a single rise. Anyway, my temp. was a little lower than normal and it seemed my starter was sluggish but I went ahead and should've backed off. What I ended up with was bigger than a hockey puck, but quite a bit denser. More like one of those curling stones I would say. I had also cheffed up a VERY nice white bean and chicken soup and was bound and determined to have a slice of fresh bread to dip in it. So, I took the curling stone out to the wood shed, set it on the chopping block and took off a couple slices with my old Plumb cruiser ax. The soup was outstanding, and the bread was edible if you soaked it for a while, you just couldn't eat much of it though. JW