Bread Machines For Dummies Read Online Free PDF

associated with breads. These flours hold a very important place in bread machine baking because of the number of people whose bodies cannot tolerate wheat, oats, barley, or rye in their diet. The automatic bread machine opens up the wonderful possibility of delicious breads for those who need to keep to a rigid diet without the common grains. We have included them in this chapter, as well as recipes in Chapter 18, because this bread machine book would not be complete without that information.
    From Golden Wheat to Flours
    Who hasn’t seen a field of golden wheat blowing on the plain, either in real life or in a picture? Evoking prosperity and goodness, this image has even been an inspiration for patriotic songs. Such a simple yet complex gift from the soil to humanity, wheat can nourish entire nations.
    The whole, unprocessed kernel of wheat, called a
wheat berry,

has three parts:
    Bran: The protective outer coating or skin of the wheat kernel. It’s insoluble fiber, meaning it does not dissolve in liquid. Bran is not present in white flour. Many people sprinkle wheat bran on their morning cereal, include it in casseroles, or add 1 or 2 tablespoons to their bread dough to add fiber in their diet.
    Germ: The embryo or sprouting section of the wheat seed, the germ contains the majority of the grain’s vitamins. It too is removed when white flour is milled.
    Endosperm: The substance within the wheat seed that nourishes the embryo, the endosperm is primarily protein and starch. When the endosperm protein is mixed with liquid, it’s called
gluten.
Gluten is what makes dough elastic, so that it becomes pliable when kneaded. Gluten also allows CO 2 bubbles created by fermenting yeast to develop a honeycomb of pockets in the dough, causing the dough to rise. Gluten is why wheat flour is almost always used in bread. Other flours can be added for flavor and texture, but wheat flour is normally in the largest proportion.
    Wheat Flour Varieties
    More than 30,000 varieties of wheat are grown in the United States. These varieties are categorized in six classes: hard red spring, hard red winter, soft red winter, hard white wheat, soft white wheat, and durum. Hard wheats are high in protein and are usually used for yeast breads. Soft wheats have low protein content and are excellent for tender foods like pastries, cakes, cookies, muffins, and so on. The hardest wheat, durum, is used for pastas.
    All-purpose bleached or unbleached flour
    If you cook at all, chances are you have all-purpose flour in your kitchen or pantry. All-purpose flour is white flour milled from the endosperm of the wheat berry. Both the bran and germ have been removed. Of all the flours available, all-purpose flour has the greatest variety of uses. It’s used to make cakes, muffins, pie dough, cookies, cream sauces, gravy, quick breads, and yeast breads.

    A bite of English history
    In English law the Assize of Bread, in 1266, provided that fine-ground wheat bread (white bread) was for royalty and the clergy. Bread made of whole wheat and part white flour was for the middle class, and breads containing all of the bran were for “all inferior types of people.”

    While you can use all-purpose flour in your machine, it usually does not have enough protein to make the gluten needed to get dough to stretch when kneaded in a bread machine. This makes for undersized loaves. Therefore, we don’t recommend using it. If you are using all-purpose flour in your bread machine and getting small loaves, switch to bread flour the next time you make bread.
    Bleached flour is chemically whitened, usually with a chlorine gas or benzoyl peroxide. It is thought that bleaching flour strengthens the protein and gives it a longer shelf life. Bleached flour is preferred by American bakers because of the esthetics associated with white bread. Unbleached flour, on the other hand, is creamier in color although it does whiten with age.

    Bleaching flour does not