sourdough and automatic breadmakers???

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t2000kw on 13 Feb 2016 at 15:37
Since there has been some posts here from real sourdough enthusiasts, I thought I'd try posting this question. Has anyone here found a way to use an automatic breadmaker to make sourdough bread? I see them at thrift stores for less than $10 on almost every visit, and some are complete with instructions and even unused! The problem I see is the rise time of sourdough being way longer than what can be set in a bread maker. I;m not sure how to get around that limitation so I've always made my sourdough bread using my stand mixer for the basic mixing and hand kneading for working the dough between rises, then the oven for the final part of it. Or, are there any electronic controlled breadmakers that have a custom setting that can be used for sourdough bread? If there is one, how would I compensate for differences in rise time between batches, since my quality control leads to sometimes longer times for rising of the dough? Thanks in advance!!! Donald

Hi,

Most, if not all, bread machines have a Stop button.  Put your ingredients

in the machine according to the manufacturers' instructions and stop the

machine at the end of a rise for the length  of  time you desire.  Then, start

the machine over.  I don't know  if any have a Pause button.  But the

instructions that come with the machine usually have a page/s with the

timing  of the knead, rise, knead, rise, bake, etc.  So, you can stop the

machine when you want a longer rise and then start it over again.  They

have different lengths of time for the different cycles for the different

types of bread.  It's a lot easier to look at the clock than knead dough. lol

Hope this helps.

Tim

I have looked at bread machines with sourdough in mind but have been disappointed by the lack of long proofing cycles, so I've never acquired one.

You could turn the machine off if you don't need your dough to proof at a specific temperature, but that means you have to watch the clock and turn it back on at the proper time. I thought the idea of a bread machine was to put in all the ingredients, walk away while it does its thing and come back to bread. For this reason I continue to make sourdough the old-fashioned way.

Maybe there's some kind of external programmable timer that could turn the machine on and off unattended.

doughooker

I remember years ago having a simple little mechanical timer (for outdoor lights on and off, things like that), but the settings were rather course as I recall. An hour could just as easily be an hour and fifteen or just 45 minutes as well.

I wouldn't be surprised if they now make a digital equivelant of that, which should be much more accurate.

dobie

SD takes longer to rise, so while I've never tried it, I don't see why you couldn't use a bread machine's dough cycle to mix / knead the dough, then shut the machine off and let the dough proof until it's ready to bake, then use the one of the machine's bake settings to bake the loaf. 

exactly right and it works .......OK.  You can take the paddles out to not have a huge hole, or worse 2 of them,  in the bread but one problem remains, they just don't get hot enough to do sourdough bread real justice.  Not horrible but also not anywhere close to hand made when baked in an oven - the reason many folks take it out after kneading and final proof it in a basket and bake it off in an oven.   The half best of both worlds:-)

A bit pricey but it can make jams, too. I downloaded the manual. The rest can be from 45-55 minutes and the rise time after kneading from 2:25 to 3:10, not nearly enough for my type of sourdough. (There is a shorter sourdough process cycle also unless the first is for making the starter and the second for the bread. Either way it's not enough time.) However, for an automatic (regular) breadmaker, this is one incredible machine. Donald

Are you sure it's worth the trouble?  I ask because I find sourdough to be far less labor intensive than bread made with commercial yeast.  My process is to mix, put it in the fridge, and take out some or all for a final ferment, shape, rise, bake.  Maybe I spend 20 minutes of actual labor time, much of which is just getting the measurements right.

I never knead it.  The water and the refrigerator make that unnecessary.

The money I might have spent on a bread maker, I spent instead on a wine cooler large enough to fit my largest bowl.  It allows me to control the temperature for the last part of the fermentation and bake at any time I find convenient.

Right now I have a bit over 800g of dough fermenting in the fridge.  In the morning, I'll take some out, continue fermenting that in the cooler, come home, shape it, rise it for 90 minutes or so and then bake it.

However you do it is fine, but I'm just suggesting you can set things up so that it's easy, you can control the time, which is the point of the bread maker.  And your results without it will be much better.