The Process of Baking Bread in the Bread Machine

To make bread, whether by machine, by hand, or by any method, you follow a set of basic sequential steps that are exactly the same as they were when bread was invented thousands of years ago. The process is as follows: You make the dough, you let it rest as the yeast does its work, and then you bake it, killing the yeast and setting the texture, which makes it edible. There may be shortcuts to this process, but the sequence never varies, even when technology is incorporated. The bread machine’s contribution to this process has been to take all the guesswork out of baking. In the past, the duration, intensity, and environment of each step had to be calculated by the baker. Using a machine, you don’t have to calculate preparation, kneading, rising, or baking times. You don’t have to turn the dough out of the machine and shape it, unless you want to. Because of the sheer ease of this baking medium, people who never had the desire to tackle the work involved with hand baking and those who can’t find the time to bake by hand, produce wonderful breads using a bread machine. The steps involved in creating a loaf of bread in the machine, which is called “baking in a controlled atmosphere,” are described here in detail, in the context of this unchanging sequence of steps that constitute baking. Throughout this book, when the terms Preheat, Mix, Knead 1, Knead 2, Punch Down, Rise 1, Rise 2, Rise 3, Cool Down, and Keep Warm appear beginning with capital letters, they refer to standard segments of all bread machine cycles. The manual for your bread machine will use these terms or very similar ones.