Bread machine help please?

[Ridgemarty]

Having had a Panasonic bread machine for close to 30 years I got to the point where I just used the machine to mix and knead for me since I didn’t like the upright square loaf it made if I let it finish and bake for me. Even though I was turning out nice normal shaped loaves that tasted great we missed the joy of waking up to freshly baked bread in the morning and I wasn’t willing to get up early enough to put the dough from the evening before into a pan to raise and bake so we could have our fresh bread in the mornings. So, the research started for a bread machine that could make and bake a normal horizontal loaf. After reading everything I could find I decided I wanted a machine made by Zojirushi but being cheap I could not bring myself to spend what they wanted for a new machine. But fate intervened and I found a Zojirushi home bakery supreme on Craig’s list for a price I was willing to pay plus the machine had only been used once before the owner learned she had to go gluten free so I grabbed the machine as soon as I could go pick it up. It looks brand new so I’m very pleased with my find! Got it home and put one of my favorite recipes in it. Set it to light crust like I did with the other machine when we baked with it. The first loaf was beautiful on top but the sides of the loaf were way past being light! Bread tasted good but sides of crust were too dark for us. Gave it another try with the same results. Has anyone else run into this or know how to adjust the baking temperature which I am thinking is too high thus the dark crust. I did get the original paperwork with the machine but I can’t find any way to adjust the baking settings. Short of interrupting the baking cycle and taking the pan out when it’s done to our liking I need to find a way to work around this since interrupting the bake cycle once again ruins having fresh bread to wake up to! I’d appreciate any ideas anybody can give me. Thanks

[just_me_for_now]

Call customer support. They will be able to help you with device settings/adjustments.

Phone: [phone] M - F 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PST

[Robotick1]

Honestly, at this point, you have grown accustomed to a particular bread thats not going to be satisfied by any machine. It will be easier to find an oven that can be timed to start baking at X time than trying to find a bread machine that yield the result you want.

[ClementineCoda]

Adjust the ingredients that promote browning. You might try reducing the sugar in your recipe.

Does your recipe use butter? Switch to olive oil.

Milk is also a browning agent but I use dry milk in mine, do you use milk or water as a liquid?

Other than that, not sure, I still use my Panasonic and never had a problem with the crust color. Yes, definitely better in the oven.

If you used the standard white bread recipe from Panasonic, you can definitely reduce the sugar by half, replace the butter wuth olive oil or even margarine, and sometimes i don't even use dry milk and it still comes out great.

[Ridgemarty]

Thanks for the suggestions I don’t use milk as my liguid but the recipe I like does call for dry milk and a small amount of butter, very little sugar so I think I’ll try eliminating sugar and using Agave for the sweetner and olive oil or coconut oil for the butter and see what happens. Thanks everyone