Bread Making Ingredients
One of the great things about using your breadmaker to bake your own bread is to experiment with different ingredients to produce different tasting breads.
Flour
The main ingredient of your loaf will be flour. There are many different types of flour but most breadmakers recommend the use of strong plain flour or bread flour.
Suitable flour for breadmakers can be picked up at the supermarket. (About 80p. in 2010)
Yeast
Yeast is obviously a crucial ingredient in the breadmaking process. As with flour there are many different kinds but for ease it is best to stick with active dry/fast action yeast as oppposed to fresh.
Suitable inexpensive yeast can be bought at a supermarket like Sainsbury (for around 80p in 2010)
Sugar
Sugar acts as food for the yeast and is therefore crucial - without sugar your bread will not rise. You cannot use sugar substitutes as they will not react with the yeast. That said for some reason I often see recipes that specify too much sugar.
Salt
As usual in cooking salt enhances the flaovur of your bread but can also help with crust development.
Water
Obviously you'll need water to make the dough. Water (without milk in combination) tends to produce a crispier crust.
Milk
Milk can enhance the flavour as well as soften the loaf (including crust). You can use dried milk powder which can be easier to manage - particularly if you are using the timer mode.
Oil (Sunflower)
Oil softens the bread.
Summary
Of course depending on your recipe there may well be other ingredients as well - these are just some of the basic ones you will always tend to use. Different ratios of these basic ingredients will produce different styles of loaf. As mentioned above for a softer loaf more milk and oil would be added.
