Bread machines have a range of loaf sizes they turn out: 1 lb., 1.5 lbs. and 2 lbs. If you have lost your instruction manual, use the volume of the kneading bucket to determine the size of the bread loaf baked in it. Knowing your bread-machine capacity will help you to choose recipes for your bread maker and scale up or down the ingredient amounts as needed.
After baking a bread loaf in your bread machine, look at the bread recipe for the amount of liquid and flour. Bread loaves weighing 1 lb. will use 7/8 of a cup of liquid and 2 ¾ of a cup of flour; 1.5-lb. loaves will have 1 cup of liquid and 3 cups of flour, and 2-lb. loaves require 1 1/3 cups of liquid and 4 cups of flour, according to AllRecipes.com.
Fill a 1-cup measuring cup with water and pour it into the bread-machine kneading bucket. Repeat, adding cups of water until the bucket has filled to the top.
Carefully count the number of cups of water added to the bucket as you pour each in. This number determines your bread maker's capacity.
Determine the capacity of your bread machine by the number of cups of water the bucket holds. For instance:1.5-lb. machines hold 10 cups of water; 2-lb. machines hold 12 cups or more of water; and 1-lb. machines only hold 8 cups of water.