As I got into breadmaking, I discovered that bread wasn't simply white or brown, there are ancient grains such as Spelt and Einkorn. Annoyingly, my SD-YR2550 doesn't have a program for Spelt, I should have bought the SD-YR2540 for that.
A solution (for Spelt) is to use Program #1 on my SD-YR2550 which is for a Basic White (Wheat) Loaf. This sort of works but the crust comes out very hard and brittle. The fix is to manually stop the machine 10 minutes early which shortens the "bake" part of the program.
Other grains/flours have more tricky requirements. They want more/less kneading or different rise times. There's no way that I could see of (say) shortening the knead time to the 5 minutes that Einkorn prefers. Could I add my own programs? Perhaps there was even an API? Turns out, there isn't one but there are some manual Programs that excited my inner geek!
| Number | Name | Timing available |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | Bread Kneading | 1 - 20 min |
| 31 | Rise | 10 min - 2 h |
| 26 | Bake Only | 30 min - 1 h 30 min |
So, it could be possible to run a few of these programs sequentially to produce a custom program? OK, it would be less convenient than the standard programs which often require no intervention for hours but the bread might taste better?
So, I decided to make some Soda Bread as a prototype or "proof of concept" project:
It's really quite perverse to make Soda Bread in a bread machine! The manual doesn't cover it and it's quite common for people to ask for a recipe only to be told that Soda Bread is so quick and simple without a machine, there's no point!
As a newcomer to breadmaking, I disagree. I don't want to do messy manual kneading or load up a bread tin with sticky dough and put it in the oven.
The recipe actually takes longer than manual recipes. Reasons:
- Many recipes call for cutting a deep cross on the top of the dough prior to baking. This lets the heat into the middle of this dense loaf. My recipe doesn't do that and produces a finished shape that's easier to slice
- I allowed 50 minutes "rise" time. I'm not sure it was necessary
- It was an experiment!
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