This is an easy recipes for basic white bread that can be baked in your breadmaker.
Throw it in the machine and bake.

• 410 g bread flour
• 235 ml luke warm water
• 40 g white sugar
• 9 g salt
• 45 ml vegetable oil
• 9 g active dry yeast

This is an easy recipes for banana bread that can be baked in your breadmaker.
Mix for about 5 mins. Bake for 50-60 mins.

• 270g (9 ounce) plain flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 150g (5 ounce) sugar (castor)
• 3 tablespoons oil (vegetable)
• 2 eggs
• 2 bananas, peeled and sliced

This is a collection of simple recipes for bread that can be baked in your breadmaker.

• Plain White Bread
• Recipe for Banana Bread

• For the best results use 'Fast Action' or 'Quick' Yeast when making bread in a breadmaker.
• Vitamin C promotes yeast growth and can help you get better results if your yeast is a little old

• Water needs to be the right temperature (tepid). Cold water will not activate the yeast, and hot water will speed its action too much, very hot water will kill it.

Using your breadmaker to make bread is great any time but nothing can beat the smell of fresh baked bread in the morning. There are 2 ways to achive this - get up early or use your timer. A Timer function is pretty much standard these days even budget breadmakers like this Morphy Richards have a delayed start - which is essentially the same thing. Follow the instructions for your particular model - it should be quite easy. Here are a few handy tips learned the hard way - fairly obvious when you've got them wrong once.

Keep your powder dry.

Getting your yeast wet will start it to react immediately - we want to avoid this. I find that first adding water to the pan - followed by any oil (if you are using it) is the easy way to go. After that add your flour (in one go so it forms an island) and then add on top of that island your sugar and salt covered by the dried milk powder. Finally place your yeast carefully on top so that it won't get wet.

Don't go off to soon

If you are going to leave the ingredients in the breadmaker a long time before the bake will begin it makes sense not to use ingredients that will go off. For this reason i never use eggs or fresh mil when using the timer.

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.