Can I use more flour in my bread machine than the maximum?

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I use my bread machine in the dough cycle only. I have a smaller machine, for a 1 1/2 pound loaf. The owner's manual says I should have no more than 3 cups of dry ingredients in my recipe. Well, I've been looking for a recipe for Polish "nun" bread (that's what I Googled and what came up is just like the bread my aunt the nun would bring at holidays :LOL:) and the smallest recipe I can find is for 3 1/2 cups flour.

After thinking on this for a while, I'm guessing the admonition to max out the dry ingredients at three cups is because any more than that would overflow the bread pan if I'm baking the bread in the machine. This wouldn't be an issue with moving the dough to a traditional bread pan to bake in an oven.

Should I be OK with having 3 1/2 cups of flour in the bread machine when in the dough cycle? Or would that extra half-cup (plus % of all the other ingredients) put a strain on the motor and kill it?
 
I have no idea, but I am curious about the answers, especially since it is about "nun bread". Sounds interesting.
 
no idea about a bread machine, but I stripped the sacrificial gear on the Kitchen Aid when I made (tried to make) a triple batch of pizza dough once. Craig was able to fix it because he's very handy so we were only out the price of the gear and food-grade grease, but I would have hated to pay the repair cost considering all the bits and pieces he had to be take apart and then put back together.


I doubt though that just an extra 1/2 cup would be a problem.
 
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I've never used a bread machine, but a friend of mine often makes some recipes slightly larger than the max listed for hers - I think hers is 3 1/2 cups, and she sometimes makes whole grain bread with 4 cups of flour, with no problems. She figured that they didn't rise as large as the white loaves, so it wasn't going to be too large. So far, no problem with burning it out!
 
I love my bread machine and have had it for about 20 years and it has only made bread once as the manufacturer recommended.

I normally use it to mix and knead my dough because my not-so best friend "Arthur" makes it nearly impossible to knead by hand.

At the moment I have the ingredients in the bread machine to prepare 2 standard loaves of bread, which is twice what the machine would normally mix.

The ingredients include about 6 cups of flour, some sugar, shortening, water, salt and yeast.

Never have had a problem with this quanity of flour.

If it helps to know, the machine is an Oster model 5838. Got it at Goodwill for $5. and it has served me well.
 
Katie, you telling me that you have had no problem with damaging your bread machine motor mixing double the flour convinces me that 1/2 to a cup more flour is fine in the dough cycle. My machine was "bought" new (BB&B with a coupon and Discover cash back gift cards) over 20 years ago, and I don't use mine as much as you use yours.

Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions and help.
 
No, never have had a problem. The machine works just as it may have when it was new.

I also gave it a real workout when I made several hundred loaves of baguettes for a friend for a fundraiser several years ago.
 
I remember when you baked all that bread, Katie! Well, if your machine powered through that event, I'm not going to worry about my machine and it's (maybe) 100 loaves of bread a year.
 
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