Help my partner exit this bread making doom loop!

June 19, 2024 10:17 AM

My partner has been baking bread with a compact Cuisinart breadmaker. She mills her own wheat and then dumps all the ingredients in the machine, and viola!, amazing bread. She did numerous loaves just fine, but recently the bread refuses to rise.

We thought it was the yeast, so we threw that out and tried another yeast. The bread only rose a little bit. So we "proofed" the yeast to make sure it foams up in sugar water, and sure enough, it does.

Here's a picture of what the last loaf looked like.

Can anybody help diagnose our problem so we can exit this doom loop?

posted by uncannyslacks to Food & Drink (12 answers total)

How much salt is she putting in? If you put yeast in first, put salt in last, and vice versa.
posted by soelo at 10:22 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

If it's not the yeast, I expect it's the machine. If it's getting too hot during the part of the process when the bread is supposed to rise, it could be killing the yeast. If it's not getting warm enough during that time, it could be failing to give the yeast the right combo of temperature and time to let the dough rise enough before it gets baked.

I would try making bread with the same ingredients without the machine once and see what happens. If the bread rises just fine when you do it the old-fashioned way, you might need a new bread machine.
posted by BlueJae at 10:23 AM on June 19 [25 favorites]

Did you recently turn the AC on, altering room humidity and temperature?
posted by teremala at 10:31 AM on June 19 [5 favorites]

Id wonder if there was a trace of cleaning material in the bread machine that happens to be terrible for yeast. Conveniently, BlueJae’s idea helps with this too,
posted by clew at 10:38 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

If it's not BlueJae's theory about the machine itself - let's posit for a minute that the machine is okay - that finished loaf looks like it didn't have enough water. Is there a possibility there's been some variation introduced in the milling process that could have contributed to that? A different wheat, a finer grind?
posted by jocelmeow at 10:58 AM on June 19 [1 favorite]

Agreed that the loaf looks very dry and consequently isn't getting kneaded into a cohesive ball of dough. Different wheats and different grinds can require different amounts of water, different batches of grain can contain different amounts of moisture, or different storage conditions can result in more or less moisture in the grain. If you're measuring the flour or grain by volume, that can make things even less predictable (different grinds or wheats might settle in the measuring cup differently). I would try with about 25% more water to start with.
posted by ssg at 11:34 AM on June 19

I would also try making it without the bread maker, but otherwise keeping things the same.
posted by knapah at 11:37 AM on June 19 [2 favorites]

You could debug it like a programmer (from before the age of unit tests): change one element at a time until the problem stops, then start replacing the original elements until you find the one thing that causes the problem.
posted by amtho at 11:55 AM on June 19

To diagnose whether it's the machine, you could also try a run of the most basic recipe that came with it, using store-bought white flour, measuring by weight if possible. Yes, we're whole wheat people too, but eliminating variables is what you're trying to do first.

We usually check our Zojirushi at its add beep to be sure the hydration is okay. If the dough looks a little tight and tearing, a tablespoon or two more water; if the paddles aren't clearing the dough from the bottom of the bucket, a tablespoon or two of flour. Perfect hydration in our machine is a dough that's formed an almost-smooth ball, with a few visible strands. Beyond tearing and into clumps would indicate our omitting a liquid or accidentally increasing a dry ingredient.
posted by jocelmeow at 2:14 PM on June 19

I agree with much of the above. I think the last loaf was too dry. Make a loaf without the bread maker and see what happens and definitely weigh the ingredients rather than measuring by volume. I make a lot of bread and the bread maker isn't where I'd start, based on the picture you have.
posted by deadwax at 2:18 PM on June 19

I would also take the same recipe and make the bread entirely by hand. Leave the machine out of it. See how it does?

My bread machine had a little paddle at the bottom of the vessel for mixing and kneading, and it became partly loose and started to slip. It would mostly mix the ingredients, but couldn't knead at all. Might be worth a look?
posted by xedrik at 4:24 PM on June 19

I use bread machines so much I have two (note: thrift store specials) and have had issues like this before. It doesn't look like a problem with the machine, it just looks dry to me.

Bread is very sensitive to moisture - all the issues with too much salt or sugar is that they pick up all the moisture. The King Arthur folks argue that salt doesn't directly "kill the yeast". So step one is checking that the right amount of liquids are getting included.

Step two is to check to see if the yeast is still viable. The tested yeast can then be used to make bread, it's just an extra bit before the baking gets going. For that just dissolve 1/2 teaspoon sugar in 1/2 cup warm water and stir in the packet of yeast; or 2 teaspoons if using bulk yeast. And by warm I aim for between 80 and 90°F.

Then set a timer 10 minutes and then if the yeast is a foamy mess of bubbles it's ready to get dumped into the other ingredients for a loaf of bread. If it is not then it's time to get new yeast.
posted by zenon at 5:33 PM on June 19