5 Things You Can Make In A Bread Machine That Aren't Bread

The bread machine is making a comeback. The pandemic-fueled home baking craze sparked new interest in bread machines and bread baking. The rising cost of food has also motivated people to give their bread machines another try to save money.

What's more, both new and secondhand bread machines are easy to find these days, so you don't have to spend a lot to get one. You can easily find them online, such as the Neretva 20-in-1 on bread maker Amazon. For cheaper alternatives, you can find plenty of used models by looking around a little online or in person.

And for extra value, your bread machine is perfect for making many other tasty foods besides bread. The simplicity factor is still there — place ingredients into the pan, push the start button, and let the bread machine do the hard work for you — but you're not confined to making loaves of bread. Here are five of our favorite ways to go beyond bread with a bread machine: pretzels, pizza dough, bagels, cake, and jam.

Your bread machine's dough cycle makes it easy to knead and raise pretzel dough. Place your ingredients in the bread pan and let the machine mix, knead, and raise the dough. Divide your dough according to your pretzel recipe and roll each piece into a rope. Curve and twist the ropes into pretzel shapes and let them rise once more.

Using a nonreactive pan (no aluminum), combine six cups of water with two tablespoons of baking soda and bring to a boil. Boil each pretzel for about a minute. Drain the pretzels and set them on a lightly greased baking sheet. Sprinkle with coarse salt and bake as directed.

If you're a pretzel purist, you can dip your pretzels in a solution of food-grade lye (available online) and cold water instead of boiling them. Slowly add the lye to the cold water; the lye will heat the water. Be sure to protect your eyes, skin, clothing, and countertops before working with the lye, as it is caustic. Ventilate your kitchen, too, as lye fumes can be deadly.

As with pretzels, using your bread machine to make pizza dough saves you the bother of hand-kneading the dough without sacrificing the deliciousness of homemade pizza. You can make a variety of pizza doughs in your bread machine, from traditional pizza dough to whole wheat and even beer-based pizza dough. You can also add shredded mozzarella to the dough to give it a cheesy flavor.

Making pizza dough in your bread machine is a straightforward process. Add ingredients to the bread pan in the recommended order and run the dough cycle. Once that's finished, remove the dough from the bread pan and stretch it according to your recipe's instructions. Place the dough in a pizza pan or on a peel sprinkled with cornmeal to later transfer it to a preheated pizza stone. Let the stretched dough rest for 15 minutes while you organize the toppings. Add the toppings of your choice and bake your pizza as directed. Pizza deliziosa!

Making bagel dough in your bread machine is a simple process. All you need for plain bagel dough is flour, salt, water, and yeast. You can also make cinnamon raisin, whole wheat, or pumpkin spice bagels, to name just a few options.

Opinions vary on how long you should let your bagel dough rise in your bread machine. For example, bread manufacturer Zojirushi's bagel recipe states that you should run the entire dough cycle, as does Red Star Yeast's website, but bread machine expert Donna German recommends letting the dough rise for just 20 minutes. 

There are multiple options for shaping your bagel dough too. Some bakers roll dough into ropes, joining the ends to form a circle, while others form dough balls, punch a hole in the center of each ball, and stretch the dough to form a ring. Let the bagels rise for 15 to 20 minutes. Boil them for 30 seconds per side in water and two tablespoons of barley malt syrup and drain them on a rack, then bake. For a chewy crust, flip your bagels halfway through the baking process.

If you can make bread and dough in your bread machine, it follows logically that you can also make cake in it. Use a recipe from your bread machine's user manual the first time you bake a cake so that you can see whether crust setting adjustments are needed. Your cake will come out shaped like a loaf of bread, so a pound cake or similar recipe will give you the best results. Follow your user manual's directions for placing ingredients into the bread pan (liquids first or dry ingredients first) for best results.

After you start the cake cycle, wait about ten minutes and then use a plastic or silicone spatula to carefully scrape down all four sides of the bread pan. This will help the bread machine incorporate all of the flour into your cake batter and prevent a flour ring from appearing on the sides of your freshly baked cake.

You can add ingredients such as chocolate chips or chopped fruit to your cake recipe. Add them when the bread machine beeps, after scraping down the bread pan's sides as described above. When the cycle is complete, remove your cake by gently shaking the bread pan and carefully guiding the cake onto a cooling rack.

Strawberry jam is easy to prepare in your bread maker, provided that your machine has a jam setting. The jam cycle mixes and cooks the ingredients. When I made strawberry jam in my Zojirushi bread machine, I added two tablespoons of pectin to the cut-up strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice that the recipe called for because I prefer thicker jam. At the end of the cycle, the jam was still quite runny, more of a syrupy consistency than the texture of store-bought jam.

During the jam cycle, the paddles run continuously, but they turn gently. This means that you will need to mash your strawberries before adding them to the bread machine. If your strawberries are very ripe, this will be a simple process, but mashing firmer berries might take more effort. I tried using a potato masher and a few other kitchen implements, but the best tool turned out to be a small glass jar.

When the cycle ends, the bread pan and jam will be very, very hot. Use potholders or oven mitts when you take the pan out of the bread machine. Ladle the jam into clean jars. Let the jam cool before you put the jars into your refrigerator. The jam keeps about a week in the refrigerator, but it tastes so good on toast, ice cream, and waffles that it probably won't last that long. You can also freeze your jam in freezer-safe containers.