"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.

Honestly, once you have all the ingredients measured, you may as well make
the dough by hand, in the food processor, or in a stand mixer. That way you
can adjust it as you go. I gave my ABM away because it was a PIA to deal
with and gave so-so results. The only redeeming quality is the "set it and
forget it" ability that might or might not result in bread in a few hours.
You can make dough in a matter of minutes in a food processor is you only
need a single loaf. It can be set aside to rise and then bake or you can
refrigerate the dough and use it later. Unless you are completely clueless
about baking (which doesn't appear to be the case) or simply have to have
freshly baked bread upon waking, then I don't think that ABMs have much to
offer. I know that some people swear by them.