Hi Mary Kate. I usually make basic loves, and through trial and error, came to the same conclusions of even mixing, spreading, and scattering as you have. Great minds and all that. 😉 Two additions to my routine. 1) I check the machine during mixing to be sure the flour mix is neither too wet or too dry. Both have occurred, maybe the kitchen is haunted. 2) When the second rise is done I remove the paddle and smooth out the hole so I don’t have to gouge the bottom of the finished product to remove the baked-in paddle.
The trick for a soft and great bread, just pour the ingredients as they come. But instead of letting it do all by itself, you restart it twice when it’s knead 8 minutes and add water if needed. Then you get a perfect bread loaf of any kind of bread. It sooo works each time, for me. It never, ever messes up. Thank you for your recipe. I made it and it’s great, I only made the changes I talked about
You get a better quality bread if you take the bread out of the machine's bread pan, put it into a regular baking bread pan, and cook it in your regular oven. To do that, you set the bread to artisan, but it could need a totally different recipe to make the artisan bread.
