I make a pretty good loaf of Challah bread, if I do say so myself. And I do say so, because I benefit from most machine loaves I make.

I thank my Dad for receiving his bread making machine whereupon he made me load the bucket the night before and time it for the bread to be done at 6 a.m. when he woke up.

That means I know the trick to making a perfect loaf of machine bread.

Step 1: get out the manual. Read the manual and follow what it says. If you don't have the manual, go to
Step 2: get your bread recipe and load it like this:

1. First, make sure that your recipe is actually a recipe designed for machine breads. They are a little different, because they treat yeast differently.
2. Next, make sure your bucket is cleaned and dry. It must be dry.
3. Put the paddle in the bucket on the spindle so that the paddle is settled and moves freely.
4. Put in your wet ingredients. This includes water, eggs, oil, milk, and maybe 1 or 2 other ingredients.
5. Put in your ingredients like sugar and salt
NB: be sure to add salt properly. A loaf of bread might be perfect, but without that exact amount of salt, it tastes awful!
6. Put everything else besides the flour and the yeast into the bucket.
7. Measure your flour by shaking flour from another scoop into your measuring cup. Do not dip your measuring cup for this; it gives the wrong volume.
8. Add the flour to cover up the watery ingredients with a hill of flour.
9. Dibble a place on top of the flour without going through to the wet stuff.
10. Carefully pour the right amount of yeast into that dibble so that it doesn't run down the sides nor does it get into the watery stuff.
11. Carefully lift the bucket by the bail and gently set it inside the breadmaker. Be sure not to bump or shake the bucket.
12. Program loaf accordingly.

When you make bread by hand, yeast is dissolved into warm water when making dough. A bread machine, however, has been designed to knead a loaf properly with the layers as I have them here. Especially important is the layering of the flour and yeast. The bread machine requires dry yeast on top, and during the knead cycle, the machine mixes it all in the proper proportion in the proper order.

I remember it this way:
1. Wet stuff on the bottom
2. salt and sugar and stuff like potato flakes or dry milk is next
3. make sure flour is on top and that it covers all the wet stuff.
4. Place dry yeast on top and keep it dry till the cycle begins.

Happy baking!