The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook

Beth Hensperger's book is an excellent book to help you go beyond the basic recipe booklet that ships with every bread maker. In theory a bread machine is supposed to make your life easier and it does, but there is a learning curve.

While I have tried numerous recipes from Beth's book I found myself just sticking to a few basic ones (white, whole wheat, pizza dough, etc) because they required the least amount of time and ingredients. Some of the recipes don't always make sense to me mostly because there are numerous steps that require time and if you are going to go to that much trouble it seems to defeat the point of using a bread machine. Basically you are just eliminating the kneading in my opinion.

The book does an excellent job of explain the difference in flours, the components of bread, and the various ingredients you use and their role. The only issue I found was that the book probably needs to be updated (possibly has by now) to reflect the changes in bread machines. For example, many of the recipes call for the addition of vital wheat gluten to help with the rise of the dough. The reason for this addition is that many machines are not able with one dough paddle to knead the dough sufficiently. The vital wheat gluten helps to overcome this problem. However, with the zojirushi double paddle machine (and a more powerful motor I might add) the vital wheat gluten causes serious problems. The dough rises far too high and ends up touching the top of the machine. This causes the dough not to cook. It is a simple remedy to fix. Just avoid the adding the wheat gluten and you’re all set.

In short, of all the bread machine books I have looked at this is my favorite.