Small Ultra-light Healthy French Bread Loaf (abm) Bread Machine

Total Time: 52 mins Preparation Time: 2 mins Cook Time: 50 mins

Ingredients

• 210 ml water (at room temperature. bottled spring water preferred but room-temperature tap water ok too)
• 1/4 teaspoon vitamin c powder (a.k.a. ascorbic acid powder, optional but strongly recommended)
• 9 g firm margarine or 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil (about 3g) or 9 g butter
• 1 teaspoon salt (about 4g or 5g of standard table salt. preferably lo-salt or other reduced-sodium equivalent)
• 300 g strong flour
• 2/3 teaspoon bread machine yeast (about 3g, standard bread machine yeast, if using sachets, not quite a full sachet)

Recipe

• 1 remove pan from bread machine and place on a electronic kitchen scale, and zero scale.
• 2 weigh 210ml (210ml water weighs 210g) and rest of ingredients carefully into the pan, in the order listed (if you have the time, do have a read through of the notes :).
• 3 select french loaf cycle (or wholewheat/wholemeal cycle if no french loaf cycle available) and select crust/firmness if necessary required for your machine. (i feel that this loaf benefits from a fairly firm crust - as long as it's not burnt!).
• 4 start machine.
• 5 notes:.
• 6 time listed is for the actual baking part of my machine's french bread cycle. they vary by manufacturer.
• 7 i took this recipe originally from a machine which had a 6-hour french loaf cycle but my machine makes a french loaf in 4 hours. my mum's does it in 2 3/4 hours. i've found that the results are pretty consistent regardless of machine, although you occasionally need to increase/decrease amount of yeast to marry the recipe to the 'rise' component of your machine's cycle.
• 8 my machine has an un-overrideable 20 minute pre-heat before it does anything whatsoever whenever i use this cycle, so i need to take the following precautions so that the yeast doesn't make contact with any liquid before kneading starts which i recommend to you:.
• 9 when pouring the water do try to pour gently trying to avoid slashing up sides.
• 10 when adding the flour, do try to cover the water completely if possible.
• 11 when adding the yeast, if necessary/inclined try making a dip (or 'well') in the top of the flour and carefully pouring the yeast into the dip/well.
• 12 if using yeast in sachet form it's worth measuring it onto a teaspoon first and holding some of the sachet (depending on sachet size).
• 13 here in europe most of our cooking is weight-based rather than volume based.
• 14 a set of electronic kitchen scales with 1 gram graduations can be quite cheap if you hunt around and more than any other cooking and baking they really come into their own when it comes to bread-making, although i usually still use spoon measures for salt and yeast, and for liquid oil when i use it. gives bomb-proof results, every single time!