Should You Use Bread Machine Mixes In Bread Making Machines?

Do I think that bread machine mixes are useful? Yes, some of them are, but the snag with all bread machine mixes is that they place limitations on your choice and do not encourage your creative talents. That may sound odd, but think about it for a while. If you depend on bread machine mixes you can only make the bread for which you can buy a bread machine mix and you can only tip the bread machine mix into the bowl and switch on the bread making machine. You are definitely not likely to alter the bread machine mix for fear that it won’t work.

OK, what is the alternative? Well, the old-fashioned recipe book, of course! Not just any old recipe book, but a special bread making machine recipe book. Bread making is a very easy, but very tiresome process. The ingredients are ubiquitous, everyday, household items: water, flour, yeast, salt, sugar and oil. You most certainly have those items in your kitchen with the possible exception of yeast, which can be bought in any super store for very little money and it keeps for ages.

And you know what happens when you follow a recipe, don’t you? You’ve read the recipe through and you know you have everything in the kitchen, but when the recipe calls for, say, currants, you open the cupboard door and see that you don’t have any currants - they were sultanas! Oh, well you think, they’ll do. You make do. You experiment. You are developing your skills and creativity. Bread making mixes cannot do that for you.

A good bread making machine cookbook will have well over 100 recipes originating from several countries and you will get really enthusiastic about trying the different ones out. Have you eaten Welsh bread - Bara Brith? Or Amish bread? Cajun bread or onion bread? Banana bread is lovely too, but one of my favourites is Brazil Nut Bread - absolutely scrumptious.

The point is that you may not find recipes for all these breads in one place, but if you have a reference point, like a bread recipe cookbook, you can start off by using tried and tested gourmet bread recipes and gradually concoct your own - sometimes out of necessity.

I once made a fantastic loaf by adding all the left-over vegetables from my Sunday lunch. It was lovely, but I could never quite reproduce it, because I did not write down the weights and measures. I could only remember that it had green beans, potatoes and sweet corn in it!

Bread machine mixes will never in a million years give you that, will they? And bread machine mixes are fairly expensive compared to the cost of 10 pounds. I usually vary the ingredients too: honey instead of sugar, milk instead of water, olive oil or butter instead of just corn oil. Rock salt instead of sea salt or visa versa. You get the picture.

Bread machine mixes are not only limited but limiting too. Furthermore, a bread making machine is a great way to use up leftovers. I have added meat and fruit in my gourmet bread many times. My guiding principle is: if it’ll go in a sandwich it’ll go in the dough - like an Indian stuffed paratha or stuffed naan bread.

Save your money by not buying bread machine mixes and be creative with a bread machine recipes cookbook.

How To Use Dairy Produce: Part 1 - Milk

The Basic Preparation Of Foodstuffs: Dairy Products

These basic tips may seem unnecessary for most modern households with a refrigerator, but modern devices can make people lazy and it is well-worth while knowing ‘why’ we must do certain things. It is also worth remembering these tips when refrigerators are not at hand or are so small that they will not hold everything, such as when camping or boating or on holiday in some parts of the world.

MILK:

Milk is known as ‘nature’s perfect food’, because no other food, consumed on its own, can support adult human life. It is of the utmost importance for the growth and development of adolescents, but it must be clean, because bacteria find it very nourishing too and quickly grow in it. If you did not buy your milk pasteurized, then you should scald it and cool it quickly before drinking it.

How To Scald Milk: Rinse out a clean saucepan with cold water, pour in the milk and apply heat until bubbles rise around the side of the pan. Maintain it at this temperature, in other words, not letting it boil, for three minutes. Do not overheat, as milk burns very easily. Pour immediately into a clean receptacle and put in a basin of cold water and cover with a fine cloth to discourage|prevent flies and dust getting in.

How To Keep Milk Fresh: If the milk is not be preserved in the containers in which you bought it, transfer it into a clean container, which has been rinsed with cold water. A warm jug will cause the milk to stick to the sides and go off more quickly. You should always keep milk in the coolest place in the larder and always keep it covered. it is good to remember that draughts occur most often at ground-level and that hot air rises. Never keep milk in an airless cupboard and in hot weather stand the receptacle in a bowl of water with the cloth covering hanging in the water. The cloth will soak up water, which will evaporate, which dissipates the heat, ensuring that the receptacle remain cool. Keep milk away from strong-smelling foods, as it absorbs smells easily. Never mix new and old milk together.

Sour Milk: Milk straight from the cow is slightly alkaline, but as it ages, lactic acid is formed and it becomes what we call ’sour’. Pasteurizing or scalding the milk slows down this process. Milk which is ‘just on the turn’ can be revived by boiling with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda to restore the alkalinity. Once the milk has gone too far and has curdled, it can be strained through (cheese) cloth, thereby separating the curds from the whey. The curds can be used as a filling for cakes, tarts, scones etc and the whey can be used as the liquid for making scones, cakes and soups etc., as it still has much goodness.

Evaporated Milk: Evaporated milk is ordinary milk, which has had some of its water content driven off by heat in some form or another before being canned. Once reconstituted by adding water, it will last only slightly longer than fresh milk.

Condensed Milk: This is simply evaporated milk to which sugar has been added before canning. The sugar acts as a preservative and will keep the milk for about a week. Do not keep in the tin, but decant it into a jug.

Dried Milk: Dried milk comes in a variety of forms and notice should be taken of the instructions on the label. Specialized products can be bought for babies, invalids, convalescents and dieters, all of which contain varying amounts and types of added vitamins and minerals. Usually, they are very much lower in fat content than conventional milk.

Your Guide To Bread Machine Mixes

Do you use bread machine mixes when you want to make yeast bread in your automated bread-making machine? If you do, why do you? Because it’s easier? It is so simple to make gourmet bread quickly from easy-to-follow bread recipes and so much more variable too. If you use bread machine mixes you are limited to the bread machine mixes there are in the shops ” no matter how many of them there are there.

On the other hand, a good bread machine recipe book is infinitely more flexible than bread machine mixes. A good bread machine cookbook might give you 150 or so recipes originating from several countries, but it will also inspire you to adapt those recipes, encouraging you to be creative and invent your own style of bread.

Bread machine mixes are really quite limiting and you have no say about what the bread machine mix contains either: preservatives, colouring, MSG, salt or Heaven knows what. OK, it tells you on the label, but you cant remove them, if you only use bread machine mixes.

Making bread is really very easy. Or to put it correctly, the ingredients to making bread are really quite simple. To make a very basic loaf of bread, you need only: flour, water, yeast, sugar, salt and fat or oil. The difficult part about making bread is the mixing. It can take four hours to mix the bread mixture together; to wait for it to rise; to knead it; wait for it to prove; knead it again and bake it.

So, if you have a bread making machine you can automate the hard bread mixing, proving, kneading cycle and if you have a bread-making recipe book you will be provided with a large number of recipes to guide and encourage you.

What could be easier? You look in the bread-making machine cookbook for an appetizing recipe; you put the everyday ingredients into the bread mixing bowl of the bread machine and you put the yeast into a time-release box on top of the bread machine; set the timer and go about your daily life or go to sleep!

The bread making machine will stir the ingredients and check the timer. My bread-making machine has a sixteen-hour timer. So, if you want your gourmet, yeast bread ready for 8:30 AM, the bread-making machine will stir the flour, water, salt oil and sugar immediately, add the yeast at say, 6 AM, knead, prove and bake the bread and ring a bell at 8:30 to announce that your gourmet food is waiting for you.

But you wont need the bell to tell you that. The smell of that fresh bread will fill your house and you will be well aware that your bread making machine is almost ready to deliver one of the best loaves of bread youve ever had in your life. And you wont ever look for bread machine mixes again. Youll be brimming over with your own bread machine mixes in no time at all and youll be giving bread away so that you can try out your very own latest bread machine mix.

Bread machine mixes ” who needs them?

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