Since a couple of years I have the excellent Panasonic Automatic Breadmaker.
The quality of bread it produces easily matches and with some help surpasses the quality provided by the bakery. Here are a few hints that help make the experience better.
Use more water!
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A 1kg bread based on 600g flour typically requires between 360 and 380 ml of water. I always use 400ml. This makes your bread a bit stronger and it’ll dry out less fast.
Use less salt
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You can easily get away with 4-5gram less salt then the recipe requires and it’ll still taste great.
Ready-made flour mixes
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There is nothing wrong with using ready-made flour mixes.However in my opinion they tend to contain to much salt and tend to produce bread that is quite light in structure. I prefer stronger bread.
The solution is adding some other non-mixed flour like rye. For example I typically replace 600g of mix with 150g rye and 450g mix. It’s not needed to add any extra salt or yeast. The bread will still rise fine.
Pizza!
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The bread maker also makes dough and the pizza dough is highly recommended. It only takes 45 minutes in the machine to make a nice dough. That being said, if you have more time I recommend making the dough earlier and letting it rest a while in the fridge.
Enjoy.