Bread Maker Raisin Bread

I love homemade bread but I don’t always have the time to make it from scratch. Enter the bread maker!

Read on to see how easy it is to cook raisin bread in a bread maker.

What You Need

The first two times I made this bread I followed the recipe in the Panasonic book that came with it. Unfortunately the bread didn’t rise enough and was very dense. It was still perfectly edible, but not the light and delicious bread I was used to from previous bread machines! (We’ve made our own bread on and off for the last 20 years!)

In an effort to work out where I was going wrong I began a bit of troubleshooting. The second time I made it, I bought another dried yeast and some different bread flour – and although the resulting bread was marginally better, it certainly wasn’t good enough.

The third time I made it, I reduced the water quantity – from 400ml to 390ml – so not by much, but enough for it to seemingly make a difference as the raisin bread came out perfectly!

This is what I used to make the successful bread (I have since made it a few more times with each time producing a perfect raisin bread!)

I made the XL bread, the largest size.

Ingredients

• 1 ¼ tsp. dry yeast
• 600g strong white bread flour
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon (not in the Panasonic recipe but a tasty extra – if you prefer a more subtle taste just add 1 tsp!)
• 40g butter
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 390ml water
• 120g raisins (next time we’ll add more raisins as there aren’t ‘quite’ enough in this loaf!)

Making It

Such is the nature of bread machines, there aren’t really many steps to follow (yay!) It’s simply a case of adding everything to the bread maker tin and pressing a few buttons.

The model of bread maker that I have has a separate yeast dispenser and raisin dispenser meaning that they are not added to the main tin.

Add the flour, butter, sugar, salt and water to the main tin. There is no need to mix it. Then add the tin to the bread maker and close the lid.

Add the yeast and raisins to the appropriate dispensers.

Choose menu 3 and your preferred crust setting.

You can also choose the delay timer setting so that it is ready when you wake up in the morning – not a bad way to start the day 😉

When the bread maker has finished, use some oven gloves to remove the tin from the bread maker and slide the bread out of the tin and on to a wire rack to cool down.

Slicing The Raisin Bread

The hardest part is waiting for the bread to cool down a little bit before slicing! Use a sharp knife or a specialist bread slicer for perfect slices – or an electric knife if you have one.

If you don’t intend to eat it right away you can store it in a bread bag or bread tin. It can also be frozen and if you slice it first you can just take out what you want as and when you need it.