Beyond Bread: Bread Machine Recipe Ideas

Bread machines are well known in the bread-making world, but they can help with other baking or cooking needs, too. Bread makers who want to get more out of their bread machines can try their flour-dusted hands at these additional uses of bread machines.

Cuisinart Convection Bread Maker

First the Machine, then the Oven
Most bread machines feature programmable dough cycles that mix the ingredients and knead and rise the dough, but don't bake it. The time it takes to make cinnamon rolls, pizza crusts, monkey bread, and bagels is reduced dramatically by letting a bread machine complete those first three steps. After the dough is ready, you can shape it however you want, add chunky ingredients that often don't mix as well in the machine, and pop it in a conventional oven to bake.

Stretching the Limits
Besides recipes that begin like bread, more creative bread machine recipe ideas include meatloaf, bread pudding, and jam.

The two keys to baking meatloaf in your bread machine are to remove the paddles from the bread pan and to use a bake-only cycle. Once the meatloaf ingredients are pressed into the bread pan, turn off the preheating, kneading, and rising cycles, set to bake, and start the machine. If you want to pour a glaze over the loaf, open the lid when 30 minutes remain. Pour the glaze, close the lid, and continue baking until done. For a complete meatloaf recipe, visit Zojirushi.com

To make a tasty desert of bread pudding, start with dried cubes of sweet bread (already made by a bread machine) and add fruit and other recipe-specific ingredients to the bread pan. Just like the meatloaf, use only the homemade bake cycle and not the preheating, kneading, and rising cycles. For a complete recipe, visit Zojirushi.com

Making jam in your bread machine may be the easiest creative use you can try because many bread machines feature a jam cycle. Just decide what kind of fruit you're in the mood for, adapt a recipe to suit, and start jamming. If your bread machine doesn't have a jam cycle, you can begin a basic cycle, stop the mixing after a few minutes, and then set it to bake for about an hour. A recipe using this method can be found at CDKitchen.com