The Pacific Compact Bread Maker (Model Number PB-002) is a cheap and cheerful electronic device that takes the hard labour out of making small batches of home made bread. I bought mine from Asda about two years ago for £12.99 and baked many loaves in first month or so experimenting with lots of weird and wonderful recipes. Then like most people, one day I consigned the device to a storage cupboard and more or less forgot about it.

The recent price rises of basic food stuff and in particular bread has made home baking a practical way to save money and also control the amount of sugar and salt used in the ingredients. I dug out the old bread maker, cleaned it up and then set about baking my first batch of bread since buying the device two years previously. However, unfortunately during the two year storage period the Pacific Compact Bread Maker (Model Number PB-002) user manual had gone walkabout.

I decided to "wing-it" and use a modified version of the recipe printed on the back of a bag of Allinson Strong Bread Flour.

This turned out to be a BIG mistake!

My next attempt required the deployment of a little maths...

I multiplied the Allinson 2lb recipe ingredients by .75 which, should have given me the exact amounts to use for a 1.5lb loaf. I set the bread maker to "Basic" using the menu button and let the baking cycle play out for 75 minutes. Then using oven gloves to remove the hot pan I tipped the loaf out of the bread pan and then removed the metal kneading paddle. After waiting for the loaf to cool down I eagerly cut into my first home made loaf for two years. What a disappointment, the inside of the bread was barely cooked and very moist to touch. However, I discovered that toasting thin cut slices produced probably the best "soldiers" for dipping into a soft boiled egg. Waste not; want not!

Clearly, something went wrong with either the recipe, the ingredient amounts or the bread maker settings.

As previously stated, I couldn't find the original user manual for the Pacific bread maker, so I did a Google search for "Pacific Bread Maker User Manual". It turns out that a LOT of people are looking for the exact same user manual with no luck. It would be very unsual for me to throw out any user manual and after a few hours sorting through piles of papers and documents I finally found the user guide.

I took pictures of page 5 and 6 of the Pacific bread maker user guide using my digital camera and have published them below:

Page 6 displays two recipes:

WARNING if you use 2 tablespoons of sugar, as the recipe in the user manual suggests, you'll end up with an extremely sweet bread. I think this is a typo and should read teaspoon or one level teaspoon for savoury breads. It seems the sugar helps the yeast to react a little bit quicker.

The recipes included in the user manual are really only useful as a general guide. I've found that many factors can determine how your bread will turn out.

Page 7 of the user guide includes a Whole Wheat recipe and some basic troubleshooting tips.

The Pacific bread maker is a very cheap and basic labour saving device. If the recipes are followed and exact measurements are made for individual ingredients, you will produce bread that is often tasty but very sweet. Probably the best feature is the kneading and rise cycles, as at this point the dough can be extracted from the pan, split into buns or rolls and then cooked in a normal oven.

From Wiki:

Bread machine recipes are often somewhat smaller than standard bread recipes, and are sometimes standardized based on the capacity of the machine's pan; most common in the United States market are 1.5lb/700g units, and the majority of recipes are written for that capacity; however, 2lb/900g units are not uncommon as well. Packaged bread mixes are available, specifically designed for breadmakers, containing premeasured ingredients including flour and yeast, as well as flavorings and occasionally dough conditioners. Only water usually needs to be added. Bread machines generally do not deal well with non-wheat flours, so any recipe that requires a substantial addition of a grain such as rye or corn that lacks gluten will prove difficult at best in a bread machine, as will any dough with unusually large amounts of liquid. [link]