bread machines - spanishchef.net

Making bread the hard way with the Spanishchef himself

I have studied cookery for many years. I have followed faithfully all the celebrity chefs and bought all their books. My library is busting its shelves with the weight of nearly 2,000 recipes books and technical manuals, but baking bread has always been a mystery to me. I have always had just a 50% success rate, whether I oven bake of use a bread making machine.

On Saturday, I decided to make yet another attempt at making the perfect loaf of bread. Because we live in Spain, I thought I would add a Spanish touch to my bread making and see if that would make a difference. I bought two new 34 cm long bread tins to make something like a French baton.

Out of desperation, I sent an SOS to my friend Anita at http://www.anitas-easy-vegetarian-recipes.com/ who I knew to be an expert baker, having operated her own catering business for 27 years. She came back to me with an Italian Ciabatta recipe which she claimed as being fool proof.

When I was getting my ingredients together, a couple of things became apparent. One, I had run out of dried yeast and two; I had run out of strong bread flour. When you have no flour and no yeast, it makes life a bit difficult when you want to bake some bread. The Ciabatta will have to wait until Monday when I can get new supplies. But I still want to make some bread.

A quick search of the freezer discovered two 25gram cubes of fresh yeast, and we had a couple of packs of Spanish flour on the shelf. So that was it – a basic white bread, made in the bread maker. I would have preferred to get down and dirty, and kneaded the bread and baked it in the oven. It’s so therapeutic and an excellent stress reliever.

All of my books on bread machines stated that you should only use dried yeast in bread machine recipes – problem number one, I only had fresh yeast. The books also called for strong bread flour in the recipes – problem number two; I only had ordinary Spanish all-purpose flour. Ah well! Time to improvise.

I decided to make a simple white bread using a recipe from Marjie Lambert’s, ‘New Bread Machine Book.’ The recipe for a 1 ½ lb loaf was:

175ml water
6 tablespoons of milk
1 ½ tablespoons of butter
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
1 ½ teaspoons of salt
425g of strong bread flour
2 ¼ teaspoons of dried yeast

I knew the fresh yeast would have to be ‘active’ before I started the ‘white bread’ programme on the bread machine. To do this, I warmed the water and milk before adding it to the bread maker pan with a about a teaspoon of the sugar. Then, I crumpled the fresh yeast into the liquid and waited about 15 minutes for it to activate. It was then just a case of following the normal bread machine procedure of adding the flour, sugar and salt to the pan. Instead of using butter, I used extra-virgin olive oil – another improvisation. I switched on the machine, selected the basic white-bread programme, large loaf and medium crust settings. Now it was time to pour the Vodka and Tonics and sit back and watch ’Strictly Come Dancing’

Then the bombshell dropped. Sheila came in from the kitchen with the pack of flour I had used.

“Have you used this in the bread,” she asked. “Why,” says I. “Because it’s two years over the sell by date…” Oh Shit!

I didn’t bother abandoning the baking. I just let it go on. An hour later there was a beautiful aroma of yeasty baking bread emerging from the kitchen. “Ah well”, I thought, “at least out of date flour smells the same as ‘in date’ flour,” and poured myself another vodka and tonic, while Jason Donovan started his ‘Singing in the rain’ dance routine.

Half an hour later, the ping from the machine told me that the bread was ready. It smelled OK and it looked ok. It hadn’t risen quite to the top of the pan, but to all intents and purposes, it was a well-cooked loaf of bread.

On turning the loaf out of the pan, the usual hollow sounding tap on the bottom, suggested it was a properly cooked loaf. I put it on the rack to cool.
‘Strictly come dancing’ finished. It was time to test the bread.

As I cut into the loaf, I noticed the crust was thin and crispy, giving way to a soft texture inside. The crumb looked good, and it was beautiful and moist. So far, so good.

Now for the taste test. I used the end piece as a taster. The crust was indeed nice and crisp, but the soft spongy bread was excellent. It had a soft, moist, yeasty taste. Very acceptable to my pallet.

Half of the loaf disappeared very quickly with a couple of thick slices of Mature English Cheddar washed down by a bottle of Rioja.

So, what have we learnt? From a potential (and expected) disaster, emerged a wonderful loaf of bread with great texture and wonderful flavour. The crust was crispy without being thick. The centre was soft and spongy and full of flavour. I wonder if I would have obtained the same results with the correct type of flour and the correct type of yeast? I must try it with fresh ingredients. My curiosity is aroused.

Sometimes you obtain your best results purely by accident.

Bill Robinson – the spanishchef

This site is hosted by (click on the graphic for more information) bread