February 18, 2022 - 11:06pm
Bread Book recommendation that uses Grams, not Cups
Newbie on this forum. I just got a new Bread Maker!
I have looked for bread machine books that use Grams, and cannot find any. Thoughts?
(I REALLY tried to make bread totally by hand; but my Apartment just does not have quite the space for this; and I got frustrated.)
Are Bread Machines supported on this Forum?
Welcome to The Fresh Loaf! An entire forum devoted to Bread Machines may be found here: Bread Machine recipes. (It's not just for recipes.)
Welcome to TFL!
To best answer your question, it would help to know:
a) what country are you in? (You didn't fill in your profile.)
b) what make and model bread machine do you have? Please be exact with model #. Someone here may have that exact model.
c) what type(s) of bread are you planning on? Plain white, <50% whole grain, >50% whole grain, 100% whole grain, gluten-free, enriched (milk, butter, eggs, sugar) ?
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I started out making bread in a machine too. And eventually switched to artisan-style boules (with commercial yeast) and then to sourdough.
Hi! Congratulations with your new bread maker!
Yes, many of us here own bread machines and bake bread in them.
Your bread machine must have a book of recipes that comes with it and a website as well, I am sure. I own a Zojirushi bread machine and its website provides dozens of recipes, all in grams and in cups, choose as you wish. Below is the link to the recipes for a smaller bread machine that bakes one lb loaves, for a bigger machine and larger loaves, double the amounts.
https://www.zojirushi.com/bbssc/
I have a few books for bread machines, they all use cups and spoons, or mL (!!! typically, in Canadian bread machine books) in the text and they all have a page that explains how many grams of flour in a cup is.
For example, one of the best if not THE best bread machine baking books, by Beth Hensperger, gives measurement equivalents on page 18; being American, it's cups to ounces, so I had to convert oz to grams! One cup of all purpose flour 135g, one cup of whole wheat 142g, etc.But it was worth it! The recipes are amazing, every single one of them.
Japanese and European bread machines tend to have different definitions of a cup, 240ml in Japan and 250ml in Europe. For Japanese models, measurement equivalents are as follows
http://conciertobarocco.blogspot.com/2013/05/cups-to-grams-for-mini-zojirushi.html
If you put recipes into a spreadsheet you can setup formulas to convert everything. It's then also easy to tweak the recipes on your device.
Google sheets is free. Numbers is free on Apple products. And the data is sync'd to the cloud so accessible anywhere on any device.
Just as a matter of course I write all recipes out and edit them before I do them. It helps familiarize me and prompts me to think about tweaks.
Also most recipes are badly written and not very usable in the heat of the moment (ex. putting more than one action in a single step, making assumptions, etc.)
When I used a bread maker ages ago I started with with ready to bake mixes, later changed to mixing my own.
You can basically use any recipe you like. Depending on experience don't go too complex, like sourdough.
So try something simple, then do variations. I believe if you ask more specific questions you get more specific answers.
But generally, when I see a recipe with "cups" I just click away. Same for anything with oz, lbs etc. People with a bit experience don't use that and I am not interested in the less experienced recipe ideas. Even water in ml is questionable as you can't measure it accurately.
BTW, even with a BM you can do things like pre-ferments etc. Still many options.