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I recently bought a Hamilton Beach 2 lbs Bread-maker. Today I used their provided recipe to make a 2lbs loaf of French bread. I followed the recipe but my bread turned out looking under-cooked on top of the loaf and on the inside. I made the Italian Parmesan bread last weekend and had no problems with it. This time, the bread seemed to stay liquid after mixing for a lot longer than it did with the Italian Parmesan bread. Being a first time bread-enter image description heremaker I'm not sure if that's just how French bread is when it bakes or what. Any advice or suggestions of where I went wrong, and/or how I can fix it would be greatly appreciated. I feel like I probably messed up on the measuring of ingredients.

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    Can you be absolutely certain that the lid was fully shut? That it was at a reasonable room temperature? That you didn't add too much liquid/too little flour? Definitely the right program and weight option? Measuring is critical for bread makers, even more so than hand made bread that can be recovered a little
    – Chris H
    Commented Apr 27, 2018 at 6:34
  • Looks as if it didn't rise properly either the yeast may've not had enough time to lift or it could have been deal that can also cause undercooking appearance.
    – Jade So
    Commented Apr 27, 2018 at 7:14
  • Try again, this time making sure to measure exactly! Bread making is a science, it's important to ensure you get the correct quantities, especially for a totally 'out of your hands' cooking experience. If you were doing it by hand you could have known the dough was too wet, or cooked it for longer.
    – soup4life
    Commented Apr 29, 2018 at 19:06

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I'm going to base my initial diagnosis on this:

I followed the recipe but my bread turned out looking under-cooked on top of the loaf and on the inside. I made the Italian Parmesan bread last weekend and had no problems with it. This time, the bread seemed to stay liquid after mixing for a lot longer than it did with the Italian Parmesan bread.

No bread machine cookbook is able to account 100% for variations in ingredients and environment. For this reason, I always watch the bread machine during the mixing stage, to see if I need to add a little bit of water or a little bit of flour.

It sounds like you needed a little bit less water (like 2 Tbs less) or a little bit more flour (like 2 Tbs more) in order for the dough to reach the perfect consistency. You can tell you have the right balance because the dough pulls away from the sides of the bread chamber, and balls up for the mixer blade to push it around, but there isn't a bunch of leftover dry flour. If you try this again, I would suggest lowering the amount of water in the recipe by 2 Tbs, and waiting to add that in until the mixing stage if you know you need it. And if it's still goopy well into the mixing stage, add a couple Tbs of flour. Be cautious here, though; French bread is supposed to be high-hydration, so it should be a bit sticky.

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