[psing]

Can anyone help?
My wife has been making her own bread for about 4 months now and after some early 'teething troubles' she now bakes beautiful bread, the only problem she cannot overcome is that the top of the loaf sinks during baking, it goes into the oven proven and looking like a loaf with a nice rounded top, it comes out pretty much square, what is she doing wrong?

[tosca100]

I'm sure someone will have an answer, but could it be that it is rising too fast or too much? Maybe a bit warm? I believe a slow rise is best.

Someone will know.

[SarahB]

Possibly not enough salt.  The salt slows the yeast down; without enough, the yeast multiplies too fast, the bread rises too quickly and sinks again before the crust can harden during cooking.  I think.    It happens sometimes with mine, but not always - this is using a bread machine, never tried it in the oven.

[mumofstig]

Put the bread into a hotter oven, this fixes the crust then you can turn it down to the temp set in your recipe.

What usually happens is that the oven reaches the set temperature and then you open the door to put the bread in and all the heat gets out and the crust doesn't set and sometimes it slumps down. Try starting off with a very hot oven and the oven temp shouldn't drop too low when you open the door, as soon as the door is closed you can reset the thermostat.

[SarahB]

I wonder if that's the problem with the bread machine?  It takes time to go from proving warmth up to baking temperature...

[tosca100]

To be honest, I've stopped baking it in the machine. I take it out at the dough stage then I do freeform loaves or rolls or use a loaf tin and bake in the oven, I think the texture and flavour is better, and I can add fruit or cheese or olives without them being mushed in the machine.

[Mosslane]

Like you Tosca I only used my machine for the mixing and proving. I found the bread was too dense. I now don't even use the machine and use the dough hook on my mixer.

It does sound like the oven isn't hot enough to start off with.

[hamstergbert]

since Learner very kindly provided me with the relevant part of the instructions (the originals of which I had lost - thanks again, Paul) I now also use my bread machine exclusively for mixing and primary proving then pop it out, knock back by hand, final prove and bake in the fan oven at 190-200.

I had a similar issue and found the top drooped during the bake step.  Got round it by increasing the initial temp to set the crust - and found that under the nice rounded crust was a single immense void which had presumably been there for the others and escaped before the crust set.

Solution I used was to slow the final prove for a lot longer in a much cooler environment and cooler still for the last ten minutes or so (usually while the oven was heating up).  If you are definitely on the right quantities of ingredients, suggest it is worth a try.

I make the 1lb mix and bake in a 2lb loaf tin which works perfick (tried 2lb in a 2lb loaf tin and finished up with ludicrously overblown objects a la Good Life).  Aslo use same mixture (standard loaf but 50/50 white and wholemeal pretty well all the time) with a smidgin less water and after the knock back cut it into chunks and more or less roll em into generally ball-shaped rolls before the final prove.  Wonderful 'artisan' looking things and delish.

Must say that since I switched from in the machine to this method I bake even more frequently - and the resulting loaves and rolls disappear even faster which I didn't think possible!

[Madame Cholet]

I've also stopped using the machine for bread after several bricks.

I found that after a while hand neading you can feel if the dough is the right consistancy.

Also if you leave out the salt you can also leave out the sugar as they counteract each other.

I've discovered a one rise only method. Mix ingredients nead for 10 mins rise slow or fast, your choice and bake. About 1 1/2 hours from start to finish. I normally use 70-30 mix but it works with white too for pizzas.