Salt-Free Breadmaker Bread

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:
- It'll taste of nothing, because salt enhances the flavour of bread.
- 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:
- If you're on a low-salt diet, you're used to things tasting different, and there are other ways of adding flavour anyway.
- 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.
Ingredient | Standard Recipe | No-Salt Recipe | Comments |
Strong Brown Flour | 400g | 400g | |
Salt | 1 teasp. | - | it's gone! |
Sugar | 1 teasp. | 1 teasp. | |
Fat | 15g Butter | 20g Olive Oil |
Or, for a great flavour, Sesame Oil (not "toasted" sesame oil - that's too strong). |
Water | 280ml | 280g | I weigh the water. Sometimes I use 300g. |
Skimmed Milk Powder | - | 1 tablesp. | This is another bread-strengthening ingredient. |
Vitamin C powder | - | 1/4 teasp. | Helps the yeast to work. Seems odd that I have removed the yeast-retardant, and added a yeast-activator, but without the vitamin C the no-salt bread just doesn't seem to work. |
Yeast | 3/4 tsp | 3/4 tsp | Unchanged - use the recipe amount of yeast |
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:
Ingredient | Standard Recipe | No-Salt Recipe | Comments |
Strong Wholemeal Flour | 300g | 300g | |
Strong White Flour | 100g | 100g | |
Salt | 1 teasp. | - | it's gone! |
Sugar | 1 teasp. | 1 teasp. | |
Fat | 15g Butter | 20g Olive Oil |
|
Water | 300ml | 320g | I always add the extra 20g water here - it just makes a better shape loaf. |
Skimmed Milk Powder | - | 1 tablesp. | |
Vitamin C powder | - | 1/4 teasp. | |
Yeast | 3/4 tsp | 3/4 tsp | as the original recipe. My breadmaker also has a "sandwich loaf" setting (10) which makes a nice soft loaf - that's 1/2 tap yeast |
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
2 comments
Comment from: James Stacey [Visitor]

Comment from: David [Member]

Oh yes…! Same as the original recipe, and I’ve now edited the post to include that. Thank you.
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What about yeast?!