We all love the flavor and aroma of freshly-baked bread and there is nothing better than baking your favorite bread at home. For this reason, people buy Zojirushi bread makers because they are known to make well-cooked and properly shaped bread. However, there are various Zojirushi bread maker problems that are bugging the users but we have a comprehensive troubleshooting guide below. So, check it out!
Zojirushi Bread Maker Problems
1) Dense & Short Bread
No one likes to bite on and chew on dense bread but what can you do about this? To begin with, if you use too much or too few ingredients for the dough, it will result in a bad texture of the bread. For this reason, you should always follow the recipe and make sure you add the right amount of every ingredient. Once you’ve got the ingredients correctly, you will enjoy properly cooked bread. The second reason behind short and dense bread is adding insufficient water, so keep the water content accurate.
Some people often go too hard on yeast, salt, and sugar and all these factors will result in short and dense bread texture. The only solution is choosing the recipe from an authorized source and follow it properly to ensure bread comes out perfect.
2) Holed & Coarse Bread
When it comes down to the fresh bread, it might look like Swiss cheese and have similar types of holes. However, if there are too many holes in the bread, it is because of excessive water used for kneading the dough. Secondly, there are chances that you’ve forgotten to add salt to the dough. For this reason, you should keep the salt and water amount according to the recipe. Lastly, if you are making fruit bread, make sure that you pat them dry before adding them to the bread dough.
3) Gummy & Sticky Bread
If the cooking cycle is complete but the bread still seems raw and it has a chewy texture, there are high chances that the thermostat wasn’t working and the temperature isn’t consistent. That being said, make sure the bread maker is heating up properly to ensure bread comes out properly baked. In addition, the sticky and gummy texture would be because of wet ingredients or excessive sugar. The solution is to use the right amount of sugar and always add dry ingredients. Last but not least, you shouldn’t bake in an extra cold room. Once these issues are resolved, the bread won’t have a sticky and gummy texture.
4) Mushroom Shape
There are various reasons behind the mushroom-shaped bread. To begin with, salt is important for baking bread, so if you don’t add a sufficient amount of salt, it will negatively impact the shape of the bread. In addition, there are chances that dough has the incorrect proportion of ingredients, so next time, follow the ingredient instructions properly and don’t experiment with the amount of these ingredients.
5) Flat Loaf
When it comes down to baking bread, it’s important to outline that yeast is responsible for rising the bread. So, when bread is flat, there are chances that yeast wasn’t active or you used expired yeast. For this reason, you should always add fresh yeast to ensure it’s active. Moreover, baking bread at an extremely high temperature and adding too much sugar to the dough will kill off the yeast. Once you get the ingredients and yeast right, the bread will bake perfectly.
6) Smaller Loaf
When you are baking bread, you would want something that’s big enough according to the ingredients. So, if bread is shrunk and looks small, there are chances that bread has risen but didn’t rise wholly. The only reason this would happen is old yeast. So, get the right amount of fresh yeast and add it to the dough. Lastly, you should add sugar according to the recipe and the loaf’s size will be alright.
7) Collapsing Bread
People often add too much yeast to the dough because they think it’ll raise the bread properly. That being said, you should add a sufficient amount of fresh yeast to prevent collapsing. In addition, adding salt to the dough will help protect the texture and structure of the bread. Last but not least, never add too much liquid while kneading the bread’s dough. Unfortunately, there is no solution to fix the already-collapsed bread but you can consider these factors the next time to prevent collapsing.