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Pamela Follett/Demand Media

Bread machines make your life easier if you enjoy baking fresh bread but don’t have a lot of time. However, the kneading paddles in bread machines pose an annoyance. When you pull a loaf of bread out of the machine, you often find that the paddles have lodged themselves in the loaf while baking. You must then pull them out carefully in order to avoid damaging your bread--and even if you are successful, the hole they leave is large and ugly. Removing the kneading paddles after they have done their work but before baking solves this problem.

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Pamela Follett/Demand Media

Set your bread machine to the bake cycle required for the bread recipe you are making. Start the machine.

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Pamela Follett/Demand Media

Watch your bread machine to see when it stops kneading and goes into the baking portion of the cycle. Your machine’s manual may have specific information on how long it kneads before baking during each cycle.

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Pamela Follett/Demand Media

Open the lid of your bread machine after it has stopped kneading and remove the dough to a bowl temporarily. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

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Pamela Follett/Demand Media

Remove the kneading paddles from the bread pan inside the machine; they should pop right out without resistance. Pick off any lingering bits of dough and add them to the dough ball you placed inside the bowl.

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Pamela Follett/Demand Media

Place the dough ball back inside the bread pan and close the lid. If your bread machine pauses in its bake cycle when the door is opened, hit "Start" again so the cycle resumes.

Tip

Even when you remove the kneading paddles from a bread machine before baking, you will still end up with holes in your loaf of bread. The rods where the kneading paddles mount inside the bread pan cannot be removed, and will still poke into your bread as it bakes.

Warning

Do not remove the kneading paddles prior to starting your loaf of bread in the machine. If you do, the dough ingredients will not be mixed and kneaded together, and you will end up with a baked mess instead of a loaf of bread.