Cook'n is the best selling recipe organizer

Hi Barb!

I hope all is well for you. Here is something that I figured out that I you might find interesting (and a little embarrassing for me. You'll understand as you read this)

Bread Machine Woes

I found something that might be of interest to people who have a bread machine. That is if you haven't already figured it out. A few months ago my wife and I were talking (which is a good thing by the way) about the cost of food and how much the prices have gone up. We got around to bread and how ridicules the price of bread has become. A few years ago one of our friends told us that they got themselves a bread machine and how much they loved making different types of bread. At that time we did not give it a second thought, but during our conversation, my wife and I decided to give it a try, and bought a Sunbeam 5891 2-pound machine. We instantly fell in love with it. There is nothing in the world like coming in the house to the smell of freshly baked bread. The other main benefit is that we know exactly what is in it with none of the extra chemicals and stuff.

Now, here is the main reason for writing this. As much as we love making our own bread, there is one little problem I've encountered. The machine I got has 2 settings for the size of the loaves, 1 1/2 pound and 2 pound. The pan size is 5 1/2" x 7" x 6 1/4" deep, and after it's finished baking, the recipes for a 1 1/2 pound loaf produce a loaf, that is so big, its like each slice is almost the equivalent to 1 1/2 slices or more. Now, that's a lot of bread for a sandwich if you use two slices. For a while I experimented with trying to convert the ingredients to weight and then reducing them by 20% and 10% with some very strange results. Flustered, I decided to search the internet to see if I could find a solution to my dilemma, and what I found was a website that had two possible solutions. One was the hard way like I was doing it, and the second turned out to be such a Duh Uh for me. ( I was so embarrassed when it dawned on me)

This is an (almost) exact quote:

"If you are using a recipe management program that allows for recipe scaling based on servings, like (Cook'n ) does. You can have the program scale your bread machine recipes up or down for you. For this to work you need to understand how many slices a certain size loaf of bread will make, use the chart below to figure this out."

By copying the recipe to a different file, changing the serving size to 12 without a check mark in the "Adjust recipe quantities" then changed the serving size to 8, and saving it again (remembering to change the recipe name), then moved it back to the original chapter. I printed out the recipe, (The only flaw I encountered was when I downsized the recipe, I haven't quite figured is how to put in only two thirds of an egg, so I just put in the whole egg), tried it out, and BINGO! A perfect people size loaf. You might want to adjust the cooking time in the machine by a few minutes due to the smaller loaf if you don't want a darker and thicker crust.

Rob Gray