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The Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook: The complete practical guide to using your bread machine, fully revised and updated, with 150 step-by-step ... techniques shown in more than 650 photographs
This comprehensive guide shows you how and provides 150 heart-warming classic recipes. The recipes are organized into chapters by styles of bread, and include different types from all around the world. Each has been tested and adapted for baking at home with your bread machine so that you can prepare all of your favorite breads with ease.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 17, 2019
My second bread machine cookbook trial! I'm not super-impressed with this book. I didn't like the format, and most of the recipes were FAILs. 1.5 stars.
Things I liked
- It's pretty.
- There are recipes.
- It has recipes for rice bread and blueberry bread, neither of which I've seen in other cookbooks (yet).
Things I didn't like
- First of all, this book is fucking huge. It's more of a coffee-table art book than it is a cookbook. I was not expecting that - the photo online makes it look like a Workman book (a la my beloved Cheese Primer - I mean, seriously, compare covers and try to tell me they don't look like each other!!
(Note that the Cheese Primer is much smaller than The Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook. I know, isn't it deceiving?? But, no, this thing is more akin to a pretty DK encyclopedia-type book.)
- The first 60 pages are informational, and that's awesome, except they are mostly useless. Information ranges from "a bread machine is like a bakery in your kitchen" (wow I had no idea!), through "different models have different blade shapes" (spoiler: they are all the same blade shape, just minor changes in profile) and "use oven mitts to remove the hot pan" (are you fucking kidding me???) and the perennially useless summary of possible available cycles (but no description of HOW they are different, just what the purpose is - I know the sweet cycle is for sweet breads but tell me exactly how the cycle differs! nope), through to pages of info on hand shaping loaves. Look. I got a bread machine because I am a lazy fucker. If I want to futz around shaping loaves, I'll just make the damned bread by hand instead of hauling out my big bread machine - it's not like it's difficult, it's just time consuming and takes counter space. I got a bread machine because I want to dump in the ingredients and then enjoy delicious homemade bread 3.5 hours later when my machine beeps at me.*
- So 12 of these 60 pages are useless. In addition, 125 pages of the approximately 200 pages of recipes are useless to me, because they require hand-shaping. Yes, hand-shaped breads look very pretty, which proves this is more of an art book than a cookbook, because they are focused on pretty.
- The recipes don't look that exciting.
- The ingredients for each recipe are written in italics, center-justified, which makes it REALLY difficult to tell at-a-glance what the ingredients are. If ingredients are left-justified, my eyes can quickly scan each recipe to find what I'm looking for (something with lots of whole wheat flour, for example).
- Each recipe has a title, and then a little subtitle which theoretically describes the recipe, but in reality is completely useless. For example:
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? You don't meant to tell me that "Hazlenut and Fig Bread" is actually full of ... hazelnut and fig???? That's just nutty. (Hahah pun intentional)
- each recipe has ingredient quantities for "small," "medium," and "large" - with no guidance on how to choose - my bread machine makes 2 lb loaves - why not label the amounts by loaf weight since that's the way most bread machines are sized???
Recipes I tried:
NOTE: I have a 2 lb bread machine and I used the "medium" recipes.
Polenta and whole wheat loaf - (in my house, I make polenta from regular corn meal, so I just use corn meal when the recipes here call for "polenta.") - FAIL. This looks and tastes like I pulverized some dry dog food, mixed it with water, and baked it. The loaf was a lumpy mess (this may be partly the fault of my bread maker, which has yet to turn out a successful loaf of whole wheat bread) and it was dry and surprisingly flavorless. Maybe it will make good bread crumbs. ... Thanks to this fail loaf, I learned that it's ridiculously easy to make bread crumbs in a food processor - why have I been struggling with hand grating all these years??
Milk Loaf - I timed things poorly and did not get to try this when it was hot and fresh from the bread machine (which is the BEST time to eat bread if you ask me). This was pretty good, but nothing really special. It's basic white bread. If you've made bread before, you've probably made this bread.
Blueberry Oatmeal Loaf - well ... this was both good and bad. The good: it tastes great! The bad: omg I have never had such a FAIL LOAF !! The dough looked extremely moist after I added the blueberries, but I figured it was supposed to be like that, and then it started rising and rising and RISING and it OVER rose, HIT the lid of my breadmaker, then collapsed during baking, and was underdone. (Note: this underdone problem happened with a previous recipe for beer cheddar bread, so maybe there is something about my bread maker that I need to figure out.)
It looks horrible, all caved in down the middle and the sides sagging in. The polenta loaf came out kind of small, and I wondered if "medium" was not a good choice for my breadmaker, but then the milk loaf looked perfect, and now this loaf was apparently too big? Are these recipes actually tested??? The troubleshooting section of this cookbook suggests possible reasons for over-rise and collapse are: too much liquid, too much yeast, too much sugar, not enough salt. I followed the recipe exactly (I went back and double-checked after this FAIL), so it should have worked perfectly, unless the recipe was not tested before printing.
Now I need to figure out how to clean the cooked-on bread off of the lid of my bread machine.
Rice Bread - I was out of butter so I used vegetable oil, and I used Jasmine rice because that's what I've got. The recipe author's rice must be horrible because in each recipe calling for cooked rice, she specifies "cooked rice, well drained" and I'd like to know exactly what she's doing to her rice that requires her to drain it????? because my rice is NOT watery.
This was really good!! Finally, a winner from this cookbook! I was about to give up all hope. :-) I don't think I would know there was rice in this if I hadn't made it myself. The bread looks like regular white bread (albeit with a slightly lumpy crust). It has a nice flavor and texture.
Other recipes that look interesting:
Egg-enriched white loaf
Bran and yogurt bread
Russian black bread
Maple and oatmeal
Sicilian sfincione
Cranberry orange
Three chocolate yeast bread
*NOTE: my daughter saw the recipes for pizza and got excited. So I guess we'll be shaping some dough by hand after all. She's right, it would be fun for all of us to make our own mini pizzas.
Things I liked
- It's pretty.
- There are recipes.
- It has recipes for rice bread and blueberry bread, neither of which I've seen in other cookbooks (yet).
Things I didn't like
- First of all, this book is fucking huge. It's more of a coffee-table art book than it is a cookbook. I was not expecting that - the photo online makes it look like a Workman book (a la my beloved Cheese Primer - I mean, seriously, compare covers and try to tell me they don't look like each other!!
(Note that the Cheese Primer is much smaller than The Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook. I know, isn't it deceiving?? But, no, this thing is more akin to a pretty DK encyclopedia-type book.)
- The first 60 pages are informational, and that's awesome, except they are mostly useless. Information ranges from "a bread machine is like a bakery in your kitchen" (wow I had no idea!), through "different models have different blade shapes" (spoiler: they are all the same blade shape, just minor changes in profile) and "use oven mitts to remove the hot pan" (are you fucking kidding me???) and the perennially useless summary of possible available cycles (but no description of HOW they are different, just what the purpose is - I know the sweet cycle is for sweet breads but tell me exactly how the cycle differs! nope), through to pages of info on hand shaping loaves. Look. I got a bread machine because I am a lazy fucker. If I want to futz around shaping loaves, I'll just make the damned bread by hand instead of hauling out my big bread machine - it's not like it's difficult, it's just time consuming and takes counter space. I got a bread machine because I want to dump in the ingredients and then enjoy delicious homemade bread 3.5 hours later when my machine beeps at me.*
- So 12 of these 60 pages are useless. In addition, 125 pages of the approximately 200 pages of recipes are useless to me, because they require hand-shaping. Yes, hand-shaped breads look very pretty, which proves this is more of an art book than a cookbook, because they are focused on pretty.
- The recipes don't look that exciting.
- The ingredients for each recipe are written in italics, center-justified, which makes it REALLY difficult to tell at-a-glance what the ingredients are. If ingredients are left-justified, my eyes can quickly scan each recipe to find what I'm looking for (something with lots of whole wheat flour, for example).
- Each recipe has a title, and then a little subtitle which theoretically describes the recipe, but in reality is completely useless. For example:
HAZLENUT AND FIG BREAD
This healthy, high-fiber bread is flavored with figs and hazlenuts
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? You don't meant to tell me that "Hazlenut and Fig Bread" is actually full of ... hazelnut and fig???? That's just nutty. (Hahah pun intentional)
- each recipe has ingredient quantities for "small," "medium," and "large" - with no guidance on how to choose - my bread machine makes 2 lb loaves - why not label the amounts by loaf weight since that's the way most bread machines are sized???
Recipes I tried:
NOTE: I have a 2 lb bread machine and I used the "medium" recipes.
Polenta and whole wheat loaf - (in my house, I make polenta from regular corn meal, so I just use corn meal when the recipes here call for "polenta.") - FAIL. This looks and tastes like I pulverized some dry dog food, mixed it with water, and baked it. The loaf was a lumpy mess (this may be partly the fault of my bread maker, which has yet to turn out a successful loaf of whole wheat bread) and it was dry and surprisingly flavorless. Maybe it will make good bread crumbs. ... Thanks to this fail loaf, I learned that it's ridiculously easy to make bread crumbs in a food processor - why have I been struggling with hand grating all these years??
Milk Loaf - I timed things poorly and did not get to try this when it was hot and fresh from the bread machine (which is the BEST time to eat bread if you ask me). This was pretty good, but nothing really special. It's basic white bread. If you've made bread before, you've probably made this bread.
Blueberry Oatmeal Loaf - well ... this was both good and bad. The good: it tastes great! The bad: omg I have never had such a FAIL LOAF !! The dough looked extremely moist after I added the blueberries, but I figured it was supposed to be like that, and then it started rising and rising and RISING and it OVER rose, HIT the lid of my breadmaker, then collapsed during baking, and was underdone. (Note: this underdone problem happened with a previous recipe for beer cheddar bread, so maybe there is something about my bread maker that I need to figure out.)
It looks horrible, all caved in down the middle and the sides sagging in. The polenta loaf came out kind of small, and I wondered if "medium" was not a good choice for my breadmaker, but then the milk loaf looked perfect, and now this loaf was apparently too big? Are these recipes actually tested??? The troubleshooting section of this cookbook suggests possible reasons for over-rise and collapse are: too much liquid, too much yeast, too much sugar, not enough salt. I followed the recipe exactly (I went back and double-checked after this FAIL), so it should have worked perfectly, unless the recipe was not tested before printing.
Now I need to figure out how to clean the cooked-on bread off of the lid of my bread machine.
Rice Bread - I was out of butter so I used vegetable oil, and I used Jasmine rice because that's what I've got. The recipe author's rice must be horrible because in each recipe calling for cooked rice, she specifies "cooked rice, well drained" and I'd like to know exactly what she's doing to her rice that requires her to drain it????? because my rice is NOT watery.
This was really good!! Finally, a winner from this cookbook! I was about to give up all hope. :-) I don't think I would know there was rice in this if I hadn't made it myself. The bread looks like regular white bread (albeit with a slightly lumpy crust). It has a nice flavor and texture.
Other recipes that look interesting:
Egg-enriched white loaf
Bran and yogurt bread
Russian black bread
Maple and oatmeal
Sicilian sfincione
Cranberry orange
Three chocolate yeast bread
*NOTE: my daughter saw the recipes for pizza and got excited. So I guess we'll be shaping some dough by hand after all. She's right, it would be fun for all of us to make our own mini pizzas.
September 2, 2018
I’ve tried almost everything inside this book and the result is wonderful.
Every recipes turned into beautiful bread.
I never doubt to recommend for all of you to buy this book if you one of the user of bread machine ╰(*´︶`*)╯♡
January 14, 2013
Love this book! Have made loads of the recipes and would only refuse to make the Anadama bread again. If you only buy one bread machine cookbook, make it this one. Full of useful tips and gives you the confidence to experiment a little.
May 12, 2016
Lots of information about all the different types of flours, liquids and sweeteners (to activate the yeast). Plus loads of recipes. Even if you like making bread by hand, you will find this a useful book.
August 6, 2011
The Blueberry and Oatmeal bread on page 206 is wonderful. The Cranberry and Orange Bread on 207 is also fabulous!
November 19, 2012
A good book for those ready to expand on the basic white or wheat loaf. So far I have made the Farmers loaf and it is delicious.
October 7, 2014
Best bread maker recipes
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews