Can I Use Any Bread Recipe In A Bread Machine

Once you now where to buy a sourdough starter and you have mastered that great sourdough loaf recipe, you may want to branch out and try your hand at other sourdough baked goods.

Most of us have recipes passed down in our family that we love. It might be Nana’s banana bread or Uncle Joe’s sandwich bread. If this sounds like you then you might want to continue making these baked goods, but with the use of your sourdough culture for the health and money-saving benefits.

How

You can adapt recipes, with a bit of trial and error, to use your sourdough starter. First, though, you need to determine if your recipe is one calling for yeast, like a bread loaf, or a quick bread (like pancakes) calling for baking soda or baking powder.

Ba's Best Banana Bread Recipe

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Theoretically speaking, if you know what the hydration level of your sourdough starter is you should be able to easily adapt a yeast bread recipe to use sourdough.

The other thing to consider in the recipe you wish to adapt is the amount of yeast. The rising power of one packet of yeast is about equivalent to one cup of sourdough starter, depending on the health of your starter.

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Knowing these two factors you can approximate a substitution of one cup of sourdough starter for one packet of commercial yeast. You would then lower the flour and water according to your hydration levels, being sure to measure it again by weight.

Once you have your sourdough mixed together and flour and water adaptations accounted for, you must also account for the longer rise time needed for sourdough. This isn’t as complicated as it may seem, as you will simply allow for a 4-hour (or more) rise time instead of the instant yeast rise time that is usually around 2 hours.

Quick bread recipes are slightly trickier in that most of them were created with the quick leavening of baking soda or baking powder in mind. So perhaps a little background on each is in order.

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Baking soda, or the chemical compound sodium bicarbonate, is an alkaline substance that is used in baking quick breads. This alkaline powder reacts with the acidic element in a recipe (i.e., buttermilk, vinegar, etc.) to create gases that create the rise in a pancake, biscuit, or loaf of zucchini bread.

Baking powder contains both an acid and alkaline component which is why you can make pancakes or biscuits with milk (not acidic) as the liquid and still have the gases creating a rising power.

If you are only interested in adding the tang of sourdough to your pancakes or biscuits then you could substitute one cup of sourdough starter for the equivalent amounts of flour and water, by weight. This gets a little tricky when you have a recipe that contains a very small amount of milk, to begin with because you are substituting water for something that contains fats, proteins, and carbohydrates (milk).

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Also, keep in mind that your sourdough starter will act as an acidic element to a recipe. So if you are using a recipe that calls for buttermilk you may be able to use regular milk instead since your sourdough will provide the acidic element for baking soda to react with.

This can be done very similarly to the method of substituting sourdough for yeast above. Simply replace your water and flour by weight with your 100% hydration starter.

Homemade

So if you wanted to make something like these sourdough cheddar biscuits you would replace flour and liquid with your sourdough starter,  along with the baking soda and baking powder (which you will use less of than in most recipes),  then allow the culture to raise the biscuits for 4+ hours,

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For a thinner battered quick bread such as sourdough pancakes, you can actually use a straight-up sourdough starter without any additional flour or water. You may want to alter the hydration level of your sourdough to produce a thinner or thicker pancake as desired, but no long soaking time is needed since you aren’t using any additional flour.

As with other elements of sourdough baking, you will want to play with recipes in order to achieve your desired results. With these tidbits in mind, though, you should be able to manipulate any of your favorite recipes to utilize sourdough.

We have the largest collection of cultures and fermentation products. From tools to individual starters to our all-in-one kits, Cultures for Health has everything you need to successfully start making your own food at home. Embrace natural eating now with Cultures for Health.You’ll have heard me talk in great depth and detail about the moment of peace that kneading provides us with, I find it an absolute pleasure, but it’s not always practical.

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Sometimes we might feel like there’s not enough time in that moment to knead our bread dough, or it might be physically difficult for some of us. At times you just might not fancy it.

Kneading builds strength in our bread dough. It’s the physical energy we apply that develops the gluten inside, the elastic bands that make our dough springy, bouncy, stretchy and STRONG. It’s one of the four principles of home made bread I talk about in Bread Every Day. Strength, Structure, Puff and Time combined make amazing bread.

How

But there is something else that develops strength in our dough too, and it’s another one of the top four. It’s TIME.

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So then, we can replace the physical act of kneading, the WORK, with a little extra TIME and everything will be fine yeah?

So then, it’s a nice idea to give our dough a little stretch and fold along the way, or as I like to do, a Roll Up. At intervals during the slightly extended rest I pause, take the dough from it’s bowl, roll it up, and put it back in.

What I am doing here is creating STRUCTURE and TENSION so that combined with the STRENGTH that is created over TIME, together, we are making that bouncy, springy dough that will puff up just lovely.

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This means that if a dough recipe fits the first scenario, you’ll be able to swap it for the No-Knead-Roll-Up-Instead technique. Making pretty much any straight yeasted bread recipe a no knead bread recipe, even if it’s enriched like doughnuts, or a cinnamon bun for example.

The formula above is an IDEA though not the rule. It means you can feel free to extend your rest to say, 2 hours and pop an extra roll up in the gap. Or condense the roll ups dough more in a shorter space of time if it works for you. Really though, the resting time is where the magic is at; 1.5-2 hours before shaping will really help.

Fast

Gluten develops better in a more liquid environment, meaning when the dough is resting, and the flour is soaking in the water, it will be developing even more strength on its own. A little extra liquid in your recipe will help make this happen.

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When you are kneading your dough you can loosely mix it and everything will be fully combined when you’re kneading. But for a no knead bread you can’t rely on that, so make sure that you mix really well to begin with. Dissolve fresh yeast or dry granules in water before adding the dry ingredients, or if you are using fast action powder yeast put it in the flour to avoid clumping.

Good luck, have a play and remember the principles. It really works, and you just might like the results even better than when you knead.Whether or not you use a bread machine, this all-in-one bread-baking appliance has some legs: it’s been around for going on 30 years now. This is a tool that definitely has its advocates — those who appreciate the machine’s production of loaf after loaf with little more effort than pressing a button. So it’s not surprising that one of the questions we hear frequently on our Baker’s Hotline is this: How can I bake my favorite homemade bread recipes in the bread machine?

The fact is,  with all the brands, degrees of quality, and sizes of bread machine out there — to say nothing of the huge universe of yeast bread recipes — it’s impossible to offer a one-size-fits-all method for baking traditional “handmade” recipes in a machine. You’ll want to learn some basic rules, then start experimenting with your favorite recipes.

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Understand that your favorite yeast bread recipes, when baked in a bread machine, will often be drier and less tender than the original. The price you pay for the superior convenience of machine baking (“just press start!”) is a slight drop-off in the resulting loaf’s quality. But if you usually enjoy your bread toasted or grilled, then honestly, you’ll never notice the difference.

So, how do you decide which of your favorite recipes to try first? Follow these tips, and you’ll soon develop the ability to quickly determine when a recipe can potentially transition easily to the bread machine

EASY