Bread machines have simplified bread making for the busy homemaker. It's really fascinating that one little kitchen appliance can do everything needed to turn out a loaf of bread, except for adding the ingredients. That's all you need to do to get fresh homemade bread with a bread machine. Just measure ingredients according to the recipe, push a couple buttons, and then come back in a few hours. When the beeper sounds, the bread is done and ready to take out of the oven. Total hands-on time is about 15 minutes for measuring ingredients into the mixing pan, which also serves as the baking pan, and cleaning up a few utensils.
Bread makers come in a variety of styles with an array of features and one of the most useful features is a time delay cycle. This is where you can program the machine to start at some time after adding the ingredients. You fill the mixing pan with the ingredients and enter in the time delay. Check the manual for your machine as some units may be limited to a certain time period for the delay.
For instance, an older Hitachi bread machine has an upper limit of 13 hours. This means that the start of the bread cycle can be delayed up to 13 hours, but no longer. That seems like that would fit into most schedules. Say you go to bed around 10 o'clock in the evening and rise at 6 am. You could fill and set the bread machine at 9 pm with a 5 hour delay. The bread cycle would be started at 2 am and, as the bread cycle in this example runs for 4 hours, the bread would be done at the time your alarm is going off. Hot, fresh bread at breakfast.
Plain white bread and whole wheat bread are good candidates for using the delay timer function of your bread machine. Other recipes do not turn out well on a delayed bread cycle. Recipes that call for fresh milk shouldn't be used on a time delay due to safety reasons. You want to use fresh milk for making bread and if left at room temperature too long, it could spoil. Recipes that contain moist ingredients may pre-activate the yeast and that would be undesirable.
A tip for using a timer delay is to make sure that water is added to the mixing pan first. The flour should be added second. Make sure that flour completely covers the surface of the water. Then add the remaining ingredients with yeast being the last added. This way the yeast will not be activated prematurely because it will have no contact with water until the mixer is turned on after the delay time has passed.
If you haven't been using your bread machine because it takes too long to make the bread, give it another try. Use the delay timer to your advantage and have the bread hot when you are ready to eat.
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