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are you using a good bread knife?
I'm an expert now that I've watched 7 seasons of GBBO.
My mother cut warm, even hot from the oven, bread with an electric knife (serrated, reciprocating blades), and that sliced the bread without mashing it. Worked well with dense loaves and could cut thin slices. I don't bake bread all that often, but I'm considering buying an electric knife dedicated to slicing bread.
My BFF's son has started working as a professional baker -- the other night he sent over three loaves: sourdough, challah, and cranberry sourdough. So good! The cranberry one I've been eating toasted with PB on it and it's really out of this world.
I have never used a bread machine, so I can't comment on how they work. but the ratio of flour to liquid seems off, esp. considering how much salt there might be in the dough w/the pickle juice (and so it's just holding onto moisture). does it taste particularly salty?
I gave my bread machine away because I could never get it to produce anything but overly moist bread. Maybe it was just that particular machine or the recipes I tried, but my homemade bread always came out far better when I baked it in the oven. CheryG knows a lot about making bread, may she'll chime in.
I’m starting to wonder if it’s just how the bread machine works. Maybe I would be better off baking it in the oven.
I found the bread machine great for mixing, kneading and rising, but would take the dough out and bake it in the oven.
We were hardcore bread machine users for years. It was super easy, we'd premix batches of dry ingredients and then when it came time to make bread it would take just a minute or two to add everything to the machine and hit start. I would say that the loaves were totally fine (nobody can really argue with hot, fresh bread) but not amaaaaaaaaaazing like the kind of loaf you could get in the oven. Then one day the bread machine died and we didn't replace it. Now we hardly ever bake bread at all.