I'm on a low-salt diet, and I love my breadmaker bread, so I wanted to know: is it possible to make bread in the breadmaker without any salt?

The internet says "NOOOO!" - with two main reasons that most people give:

1. It'll taste of nothing, because salt enhances the flavour of bread.
2. The texture will be rubbish, because salt retards the rise of the bread, making a better texture.

But I say "YES!!!" - and here's why:

1. If you're on a low-salt diet, you're used to things tasting different, and there are other ways of adding flavour anyway.
2. Bread without salt has more bubbles, but you can do things to help the texture.

My Recipe

I want to show you how I get my recipe from my breadmaker's standard recipe - this way you'll be able to convert your standard recipe, hopefully. I use the small loaf (400g flour) recipes, because that lasts my family a day!

Don't forget that you're allowed to experiment (and fail) with the breadmaker - don't give up if the first loaf doesn't work, make a small change and try again.

And: be OCD with the ingredients: measure to the nearest gram, use proper tablespoon/teaspoon measures, flatten the ingredient in the measure. With breadmaking you're doing chemistry, and small differences matter.

Brown bread.

So here's what I've done to the basic recipe:

• Removed the salt
• Doubled the fat weight, and replaced butter with Olive Oil (You could probably still use butter - but no-salt butter!)
• Added two enhancing ingredients: Skimmed Milk Powder (1 tablesp. for 400g flour), Vitamin C Powder (1/4 teasp. for 400g flour)

It works with Wholemeal too:

Where to buy:

For UK readers: I use Sainsbury's Strong Bread flours - they're quite tasty, and inexpensive, and they work well. I get the Skimmed Milk Powder from Sainsbury's too - don't use 'basics' though, it's horrible, get good quality powder. Lidl do straight Sesame Oil when it's Oriental week - great replacement for olive oil. I get the powdered Vitamin C from Holland & Barrett or Amazon