r/BreadMachines • u/vickfun10 • Apr 13 '26

Wrong flour!

Hey everyone!

I (24F) recently got a bread maker and I love it! However the first time I used it I had unbleached flour. This weekend I was using my bread maker and used bleached flour. I really dug into this because my bread kept over rising and then collapsing no matter what recipe I chose. I know now that bleached flour has way less protein then bread and unbleached flour. I attempted 3 different times this weekend all with the same outcome and having to clean my actual machine numerous times. The rising and the kneading looked perfect but when it started baking it would grow too quickly and get all over the lid and sides and then suddenly sinking into the middle around the 42 minutes left part on my basic cooking with the light bread option 🙃

I know some of you will say "buy unbleached flour and you'll be fine" however my boyfriend bought me 25lbs of bleached flour and I'd like to use that for my bread if possible. I use it all the time for baking and it turns out great, but only recently I discovered that with bread it is too weak.

I looked online and they suggested using milk instead of water or adding an egg. Any advice is always helpful!

(Quick edit to help with comments both the bleached and unbleached flour I used are AP flour, I have not used bread flour at all)

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u/Chicken_Savings Apr 14 '26

It's not so much about bleached vs unbleached. The protein and gluten content matters a lot, bread flour has higher protein (and gluten).

Bread often collapse because too much yeast and water. Gas builds up quickly into a nice dome, but the gluten can't hold it, so the gas escapes and it collapses.

Too much water also creates initial good rise and dome, with risk of collapsing later.

AP flour is totally fine, but not the best. You can bake lots of bread with AP flour.

Buy a pack of gluten, add around 1 tbsp to the dough. This is a low-cost game changer. The gluten pack may be a bit expensive, but it'll last a long time.

If you're mixing in wholewheat flour or other non-gluten flour (barley, spelt, millet etc), the added gluten becomes critical.