Make sure that all ingredients are at LEAST room temp. Put all
ingredients in bread pan in order listed. Yeast must be fresh! I keep
it in the refrigerator, but bringing to room temp. only takes a few
minutes. If you are making bread other than white, you may need to
add gluten and/or lecithin to your dough. They are especially helpful
when making whole wheat, rye or other heavier type breads. They help
improve elasticity of the dough. (They are usually available at
Health Food stores and I have found Lethicin near the Vitamins at
Pharmor.) I usually set the dark/light setting to "11 o'clock" unless
I'm making sweet bread, then I set it back to about "9 o'clock". The
key to using the auto-breadmaker is to have the correct proportion of
flour to liquid. After the dough has kneaded for a few minutes in the
breadmaker, look in and see if there is ONE ball of dough which is
incorporating most of the flour from the sides of the pan. If it's a
"gooey mess", add 1 T. flour until it makes ONE SOFT ball. If there
are two or more balls, add 1 T water and see if it makes 1 ball. (You
may have to go back and forth with this until you get it right <G>)
While it's in its first knead (BEFORE it goes into the fermentation
cycle), open the lid and touch the dough lightly. It should be in one
soft ball. If your finger has sticky dough on it, add a Tablespoon of
flour. Let it knead a minute and touch it again and check to see if
it's still sticky. Keep adding a tablespoon at a time ONLY until it's
no longer sticky, DON'T OVERDO IT. If it just makes a slight
indentation and doesn't look crusty, it's probably about right. If it
feels too dry or is in two or more DRY-looking balls (not a sticky
mass), add a tablespoon at a time of WARM water. PLEASE DON'T ADD TOO
MUCH LIQUID. If you add too much liquid in proportion to the flour,
the dough may rise too much and overflow. If you look in and see that
the dough is threatening to rise up over the top of the bread pan,
don't panic, poke it a few times with a toothpick, skewer, fork,etc.
until it deflates a little. PLEASE SEE BREADMAKER HINTS #2 Rev for
continutation of hints. Written in 1991
