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Okay, a couple weeks ago I was in Florida helping to clear out my grandparents' house, since they both passed on earlier this year (my grandfather in February and my grandmother in May). Well, my grandfather had been big into baking his own bread, including grinding his own flours. While I'm not quite as hard-core as he was, I snagged some of his equipment, mostly items i could pack in our luggage for the flight back (the pizza peel, the bowl scrapers, the bench scraper). However, the prize item was his Zojirushi bread machine, which had to be shipped. (An older model of this machine. They tend to run at about $100 used and $200-300 new, and we shipped it for $65, plus other items in the box!)
A couple nights ago I tried it out for the first time, though on the cake setting. Took over twice as long as it would have taken me to make the same cake the normal way, but there was much less to clean up and do overall. And the cake turned out fine. Mom took some to work and it was a big hit.
Well, today I'm baking bread in it! The sandwich loaf from the machine's instruction manual, only with dry buttermilk instead of dry milk. This will be my first time allowing the bread machine to do the whole thing, from kneading to rising to actually baking. The couple of times I used my grandma's bread machine (grandma on the other side), I had kept it on the dough cycle, then baked the bread in the oven. Then again, my grandma's machine makes cylindrical tall loafs, while the Zojirushi makes an actual loaf.
We'll see how it turns out!
ETA:
Okay, I think the bread rose well and is tasty. However, I'm not entirely happy with how the machine baked it. The top crust is not as brown as I would like, and got all wrinkly as it cooled. And the bread would not release from the kneading blades and the kneading blades would not release from their shafts, so when I finally got the loaf out of the pan, it had two holes in it. Holes are not a good thing to put into a crust before it has cooled, since that can make a bread gummy inside. I also can barely slice it, it's so soft! I think Mom may like that, but it makes it hard to slice the loaf. Definitely needs a stronger crust for slicing, at the very least.
A couple nights ago I tried it out for the first time, though on the cake setting. Took over twice as long as it would have taken me to make the same cake the normal way, but there was much less to clean up and do overall. And the cake turned out fine. Mom took some to work and it was a big hit.
Well, today I'm baking bread in it! The sandwich loaf from the machine's instruction manual, only with dry buttermilk instead of dry milk. This will be my first time allowing the bread machine to do the whole thing, from kneading to rising to actually baking. The couple of times I used my grandma's bread machine (grandma on the other side), I had kept it on the dough cycle, then baked the bread in the oven. Then again, my grandma's machine makes cylindrical tall loafs, while the Zojirushi makes an actual loaf.
We'll see how it turns out!
ETA:
Okay, I think the bread rose well and is tasty. However, I'm not entirely happy with how the machine baked it. The top crust is not as brown as I would like, and got all wrinkly as it cooled. And the bread would not release from the kneading blades and the kneading blades would not release from their shafts, so when I finally got the loaf out of the pan, it had two holes in it. Holes are not a good thing to put into a crust before it has cooled, since that can make a bread gummy inside. I also can barely slice it, it's so soft! I think Mom may like that, but it makes it hard to slice the loaf. Definitely needs a stronger crust for slicing, at the very least.
