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With the worlds fast pace many of us are doomed to the fate of fast food restaurants and we skip quality food for the easy way of a take away. When it comes to a loaf of bread if doesn’t have to be. In the modern Kitchen today the bread maker is one of the best inventions.

My bread maker is great it produces a great tasting loaf in less than half the time it takes for traditional methods. However if you read your recipe book you will notice that they leave a few things out. The moisture content in the flour can vary, due to age and environment, and it will make no difference how vigorously you follow the recipe, some of the time it is not going to come out as planed. On the up side there are two ingredients you can add that will help ensure a perfect loaf every time.

Wheat gluten is a grain protein which you can add. This is because not all flour has the same protein content. Bread flour has the highest which is followed by all-purpose flour and at the bottom is cake flour. Bread flour costs the most but you don’t have to have it. All-purpose flour works well for the making of bread if you add wheat gluten. So instead of buying all different types of flour for the different things you make why not buy all-purpose flour and use wheat gluten when you are making bread. Wheat gluten is not very expensive and you use a tiny amount when making bread. As little as two teaspoons per a loaf, so it will last a long time.

When you decide to add wheat gluten to your bread maker, you will get the very best results adding it to the pan with the flour. The manufacturer of my bread maker machine recommends adding the water before flour so I go and add the wheat gluten straight after the flour gos in as to keep it away from the water.

The second secret ingredient is dough conditioner. The different commercial dough conditioners contain different ingredients, which are commonly a combination of wheat gluten, yeast and other chemicals such as ammonium chloride, DATEM (an emulsifier),ascorbic acid (vitamin C), different calcium salts and sometimes soy.

The main problem with bread makers is that they have a vertical pan which gives light crumb at the top with a denser crumb at the bottom. Dough conditioner help solve this problem by strengthening the texture with gives way for a more consistent rise and a more consistent crumb.

As with wheat gluten, you don’t need much. A very tiny amount in fact. For a 1 and a 1/2 pound loaf, I find that a mere 1/4 teaspoon of dough conditioner is enough to give me the best results.

Either wheat gluten or dough conditioning, you want to review the proposals on the package for the proposed amounts. With bread improvers, different brands give different results.

Want to find out more about Bread Maker Machines, then visit John Ashley Stephens’s site on how to choose the best Bread Maker for your needs.