My favourite bread recipe

Recipe using a bread machine.

Ingredients:
500g flour- made up of 250g wholemeal bread flour, 125g Rye flour and 125g Einkorn flour.
25g margarine- I use any vegan margarine that is in my fridge.
1tsp salt
1tsp sugar
1.5 tsp dried yeast
25g mixed seeds, I like to use a mix of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, poppy seeds, sesame seeds and a few pine nuts, however any combination can produce a tasty mix, try linseed, or chopped nuts or hemp seeds, or may be add raisins or chopped dates for a sweeter bread.
350ml water

Put the water into the bread machine first (unless your bread machine says otherwise).
Then add the flour, covering the water. I find that the above flour mix makes a condense satisfying wholesome bread.
Make a well in the middle of the bread, but don't go as deep as to reach the water.
Put the dried yeast into the well.
Put half the seed mix in one corner and the other half in the opposite corner of the machine.
Put the margarine in one of the remaining corners.
Put the sugar in the remaining corner, and the salt alongside one of the seed mix corners.

Set the bread machine to bake a medium loaf, with a light crust, my bread machine takes 3.5 hours to complete, and can be set to start up to ten hours ahead, so making it possible to wake to the smell of freshly baked bread- wonderful. On my machine, I use setting 3, which is for a basic wholemeal loaf.
I have found that the flour mix and seed mix makes a very tasty, textured bread.

Bread making experiments

I have started to experiment with my new hobby of bread making. since I have several bags of bread mixes, which I mistakenly thought was bread flour, and a large bag of Spelt flour that isn't bread flour, I decided to mix them together and tone down the salt in the bread mix, and make the spelt flour more bread friendly (less crumbly when used in bread). the pack of bread mix states add 300ml of water, which I did, but I also decided to add 50ml of olive oil, to compensate for the dryness of non bread flour. I used 300g bread mix and 200g spelt flour, leaving in the bread machine on setting one (general) for 3 hours and  30 minutes. the result was a decent bread, much to my surprise.
So tonight I have used the remaining 200g of bread flour mix, 200g or spelt flour and 100 g of string wholemeal flour, thus finishing of the contents of 3 packets of flour in my cupboard! No olive oil left, so I used 50ml of sunflower oil, and the 300ml water, setting the bread machine on setting 1, as usual. Let's see what the resulting loaf tastes like!

Bread making: Mistakes that I've learned from so far!

Being new to bread making, I'm learning as I go along. So I decided to pass along the things I've learned by making mistakes, to save anyone else doing the same :)

Firstly, not all flour is suitable for bread making. I tried using wholemeal flour, and spelt flour, but the bread turned out very dry, despite using the same recipe as I had previously. It must have something to do with the flour. So I have learned that bread flour works much better. secondly, Bread Mixes, are not the same as Bread Flour. A Bread Mix already has all the ingredients in it, and you just add water. Whereas Bread Flour (even with seeds added), has to have the other ingredients such as margarine, salt, sugar, yeast, water, added, to make the bread. The end result from a Bread Mix can be fine, but it doesn't allow you to adjust any of the ingredients, such as less salt and sugar, as I have discovered that most recipes add too much for our taste, so it can be adjusted.
So there we have the two biggest mistakes I've made in bread making so far, I'll post more as I make them.............