Good morning Eduarda ~ Did you find one yet? If so what kind did you get? We did some shopping at SAM's club here Monday, (a place you pay a yearly fee and buy quantity and get a better price). I got a 25 lb. bag of bread flour for around $5 or $7, I think, and 2-1 lb. pkgs. of instant yeast for around $3. I keep the yeast in the freezer, except for a small container in the fridge for dipping into to make bread or pizza crust. Made pizza dough yesterday afternoon for pizza last night and it is such a treat to make in the machine. This week I want to try a feta/dill bread. Got the feta cheese at SAM's also. I will post that recipe also when I make it. Happy bread making. You are in for a treat! FlowerLady

Wow! Congrats, KD!! I love it when that kind of stuff happens. :) I did the opposite. Everyone keeps telling me I can substitute the discard for the same amount of water and flour in any old recipe, but whole wheat really is different. I used a recipe for white as a basic guide for the dough ball, but I think it wasn't wet enough. It was well risen, though, so I made rolls. They came out with a hard crust (I was aiming for crunchy) like good old fashioned bolillos. (Isn't it weird that all the old time tough crusts like bagels, pita and bolillos have gone by the wayside just as people's teeth have gotten so much better?) The inside is nice and tender, but I think they would have been better larger, with more soft crumb per hard crust. OTOH, I only know for sure because one fell on the floor as I was taking it out of the oven, so, of course, I had to eat it right away. :)

Linda, If you want to convert a bread machine recipe to a made by hand recipe, try this: in a bowl - put in the water or other liquid called for add in the yeast, whisk to dissolve, let sit 5-10 minutes to "proof" the yeast and made sure it is viable add any sugar, honey, maple syrup or other sweetener called for in the recipe, stir well add half of the flour called for in recipe, add salt and mix well, stirring with a strong spoon or heavy duty whisk also add in any dry herbs or spices now add in any butter, oil, or other fat called for - if melted butter, make sure it is only just warm, not hot - add in any egg(s) listed in recipe add in rest of flour and any other ingredients, chopped herbs, nuts, dried fruits, cheese, etc. stir well with spoon or mix with your hands until dough is a rather shaggy mass turn out dough onto a clean, floured flat surface and knead for 8-10 minutes adding only small sprinkles of flour if the dough sticks to your hands and the kneading surface [if you forgot those nuts, cheese, or raisins, you can knead them in now] when dough has been kneaded sufficiently it will come together into a nice firm ball (rather than a shaggy mass) and spring back when poked with a finger grease or oil a large bowl (or use the one you mixed in), put dough in, turn it around in the oil to grease the top of the dough and turn it oiled side up in the bowl; cover with a bowl cover (shower cap type), plastic wrap, or wax paper, then cover with a clean kitchen "tea" towel (dampened with hot water if you are making whole wheat bread) and set the dough to rise until doubled in bulk turn out dough, knead 2 minutes, divide into portions according to recipe or not - form loaves and put in greased loaf pans or not - cover again with wrap, and let rise until doubled in bulk preheat oven, bake bread until done, let cool at least a few minutes before cutting - and enjoy!

Thank-you for the explanation about the scaling on the website. I'm sorry I maligned a fictive editor! I was just trying to make the amounts match and thought the second addition was an error too. :) If there had been a single measure of honey and the directions had said "half of the honey" it would have been clearer and worked better on the scaling. Oh, well. Scaling a recipe you've never made can be dangerous even if you think through every ingredient. My mother's challah recipe, which I've made the most, and made for decades, makes three loaves, and it's much better to make three loaves and freeze two than to try to make it work for a single loaf. One thing to remember in baking bread is that recipes often fail the first time you make them, especially while you're developing expertise. There are so many variations in flour, kitchen climate and oven climate, that a recipe is really a starting point, not an absolute. I'd also follow the recipe exactly once to get a better idea of what it's supposed to be before changing the ingredients. After that, remember that when you make changes, you're not following the recipe, and you're relying on some very precise chemical and biological reactions not to care. Keep in mind that you're making an experiment, not a recipe, and that there are things that may be going wrong. I've been doing that almost weekly for the last year, and learning a lot from it about what reactions such changes bring, It's fun! But if your point is to make a good recipe and have a good loaf of bread, do start by actually making the recipe. I have all kinds of ideas of how to proceed and tried writing them out, but I realized I'm not expert enough to make them make sense. It sounds like it might be overrisen, underbaked, or perhaps baked at too low a temperature. Do you have an oven thermometer? Re soaking, if you're trying to adjust the nutrients of the whole wheat, you should do at least 8 hrs. and with some acid (I found a jar of vitamin C crystals easy to find and use a pinch of that, but normal kitchens acids will work). Adding extra liquid for it might have required a little extra baking too. I've found that even if a soaker seems very dry, when I mix everything together, it's fully hydrated and doesn't need an addition of water. This is true even when I knead the ingredients together by hand. My best advice is to decide on a few small adjustments, try again, and see what happens. :)