then I left the machine for a while; I returned to
check on it and found it allegedly in the middle of the first rise - but
the dough was not ready

This is what I've learned about breadmaker machines. I don't walk away from
them in the mixing stage. I take the time to do a few things in the kitchen
while I'm watching it to see if it needs scraping down on the sides, if I
need to add water, if I need to add flour. Sometimes if I have a heavy loaf
(oats, rye flakes, wheat flakes, seeds, stone ground wheat flour), I will
wait for it to finish the kneading, unplug it and set it again to start all
over, because I've found probably that it hasn't been kneaded enough.

In the beginning with this machine that seems that you can set it to do
"everything," I'd stick to the basic recipe setting such as "wheat bread"
"basic bread" "french bread," whatever you have, until you get comfortable
with how your bread should look when it begins to rise.

I think that most people when they get a bread machine, if they have no
prior experience with how a bread should look (approximately) when it begins
to rise, then they will have a little trouble. Bread making in any
contraption is a joy! Love it, you've got a great machine.

Dee





"Hillary Israeli" > wrote in message
...
> Hi. I have a Zojirushi BBCC-V20 that I hardly ever use and I find it quite
> hit or miss, frankly. Yesterday I made a really good oatmeal bread; today
> I am TRYING to make an oatmeal maple bread but I'm having a problem. The
> recipe (from a cookbook called Bread Machine Baking or something like
> that) says that I should put the ingredients in in the right order and
> blah blah, and then use the machine's "basic cycle, medium crust" setting.
> OK, so, I did that and then I left the machine for a while; I returned to
> check on it and found it allegedly in the middle of the first rise - but
> the dough was not ready - I could see through the window it was all
> crumbly. So, I took it out and added a little water until it became
> cohesive, and kneaded it a little bit just to make it stick together and
> shoved it back into the machine, and started over on basic cycle again. My
> question is - what would have been the best thing to do? The machine has a
> homemade bread cycle option, I could have said "preheat x minutes, knead y
> minutes, rise z minutes, knead a minutes, rise b minutes, knead c minutes,
> rise d minutes, bake w minutes -- but I have no idea what would have been
> apppropriate to fill in for those variables. So, will restarting the basic
> cycle over be ok, given that it obviously still DOES need all that
> kneading and rising? Or what? and in the future, how can I figure out how
> many minutes to set this sucker for?
>
> Thanks for any tips from a bread machine loser,
> h.
>
>
> --
> hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
> "uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
> not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large