Hello Dear All,
I'm going to resurrect this ancient thread. I'm also struggling with my breadmaker. The only setting I've tryid so far was the French bread, which is the main reason I got the machine in the first place. Although I didn't have as sad and scary looking results as the bread-warrior
sds, yet after 5 loaves I still didn't get
French bread.
The problem with my loafs is that the texture is far not as airy as a French bread should be. It's much more denced and rubbery. It also seems to be more even more densed in the bottom half than in the top half. The loaves are flatter than I expected them to be and are.. well, just too dense!
I've been watchin the process trhough the machine window and here's what I noticed: the dough doesn't rise enough. It does rise, but I just expected it to rise more. And after this insufficient rising it shrinks back. My machine has 3:50 cycle for French bread, of which last 70min are for baking. So, the shrinking starts when it already started baking, most of shrinking happens about 10-20min into the baking stage. And it shrinks in 2 ways: the middle of the loaf starts collapsing, although not instantly. Not the very middle, but rather the area in between the center and the edges of the loaf. The center still retains some bumps. And at the same time the entire loaf slowly shrinks in height. In fact it starts height-shrinking after it starts cratering.
I follow the book recipe precisely. Except for a few things.
1.Amount of Water. The troubleshooting guide says that humidity can affect the dough and if the bread seems too wet then reduce the amount of water. So instead of 3/4 cup (the measuring cup provided with the machine, all the quartes and half marked on the side) last time I took just alittle over 1/2cup.
2. Type of Flour. The book calls fro Strong White Bread Flower. I guess no such thing precisely in Finland so I used Hiiva-Leipa-Vehna-Jauho (whatever). However, the Finnish section of the book that came with the machine has it as Karkea vehnajauho. While according to the markings of my Hiivaleipa... bag it's only Puoli-karkea.
Question: Should I look for fully Karkea instead?
3. Yeast. The recipe calls for Fast Action Dry Yeast. I didn't see any Fast action in Finnish supermarkets, so I got just regular Sunnuntai kuivahiiva. The due date is a year ahead. I keep the opened box with yet unopened sachets in the pantry, an opened sahchet - in the fridge (or should it be freezer)? So, I was adding somewhat more yeast than the recipe requires to make up for absence of fast action. So, the recipe states 1tsp (also provided with the machine), I used 1tsp+just a little more. That didn't really help the texture but gave stronger metallic/yeasty smell and taste. Not really an enhancement. Especially since the smell wasn't like "happy yeast, feeding plentifully" but rather like "lots of semi-starved grumpy yeast".
So I went back to the recipe amount of yeast.
4. Tmperature of Water. The book says luke warm, 21-28C. And I did so. But last night it dawned on me that this temperature was for that Fast Action yeast, which mine is not. So I took somewhat warmer water. As I found out after the program had been already started this "somewhat warmer" was around 36C. That's definitely warmer than the book says, and it says "don't use too warm water as it might kill the yeast". BUT: the results were BETTER! What I also caught is that the recipe says to use big loaf programme even for the small loaf recipe, which I did. It still didn't rise enough, still shrank back and cratered somewhat. But the yeast smell was happier and the texture SOMEWHAT improved. Although still it's far from bubbly French. And then it dawned on me again, that the yeast package says 42C. it is much warmer than the book says but I guess that's what neds to be done for these non-Fast Action yeast.
I'm going to try that tonight.
If that won't work, then the only idea I have left is to rerplace hiivaleipa..-flour by some Karkea flour. After that - I'm out of ideas.
So, what do you guys think -
could the water temperature and/or Karkea instead of (puoli-karkea) Hiiva-leipa..flour solve the texture problem?
. Now I am waiting for dh to come home because the recipe book is in Finnish.... 
I can just about figure out the manual (which also came in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish) but there are no recipes in the manual. Also posted off a letter to Kenwood UK (by snail-mail) asking them to please send an English version to Espoo. They have some excellent recipes on their website 
Miksi leivänpaahtimissa on asetus, jolla leivän saa palaneeksi korpuksi, ettei sitä kukaan syö?
