Curious about making jam in a bread machine? Here’s one woman’s experience trying it!
Most of the time, I make jam on my turquoise, 45 year old, electric stove. I’ve also made jam on a camp stove, on an induction burner, on a plain gas stove and even on a high-powered commercial gas range. And now, I’m someone who is making jam in a bread machine.
Several months ago, I spotted this post on the King Arthur Flour blog, in which they make a batch of strawberry jam in a Zojirushi bread machine. Being that I’m fascinated by all things having to do with jam making (don’t tell me you didn’t notice), I determined that this was something I wanted to try. In the interest of science, of course.
I got in touch with the folks at Zojirushi and they very nicely agreed to give me a review unit so that I could see how this whole bread machine jam thing worked. It arrived on my birthday (which was more than a month ago now) and I spent at least a week circling it warily, uncertain whether I wanted to trust my fruit to an automated machine that wouldn’t let me control the heat source.
Finally I unswaddled it from boxes and styrofoam, mashed up two cups of strawberries and got to work. The instructions that come with the Zojirushi say to combine 2 cups of crushed berries, 3/4 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon lemon juice. For the first round, I followed the instructions exactly and cooked the jam without any additional pectin.
Fruit, sugar and lemon juice go into the pan. Then you close the lid and set it to the jam setting (don’t be fooled by the 3:45 time in the picture above, I took that before I set it run the jam cycle. It only takes 1:20 to make jam in the Zojirushi). When the cooking time is up, the machine issues a couple of friendly beeps so that you can rush over and check on your jam (that is, if you weren’t hovering very nearby, occasionally lifting the lid a little to peek at the progress).
So here’s the good news. This machine, which was designed to bake bread, makes perfectly adequate jam. It gets quite hot, the paddles keep the jam moving to prevent any scorching and it’s dead easy to use. If you’re the type who likes to freeze fruit and make small batches of jam throughout the year, making your jam in a Zojirushi is a really good option. However, it has a major flaw as a jam maker and that is that with the lid closed, you’re just never going to get the necessary amount of evaporation to get a really thick jammy jam.
I did one batch without pectin (sorry, no pictures of the jam with pectin, I knocked it over just after pouring it into the jar and splattered my kitchen entirely in sticky fruit spray) and one with and both remained stubbornly runny and without the body that a good jam should have (though the batch with 2 teaspoons of powdered pectin did firm up more than the batch without).
The picture below pairs a stove cooked jam (on the left) with the jam cooked in this bread machine. You can see the difference in the body of the jam. The stove top jam reduced by more than 1/3 during cooking, resulting in a thick-set, glossy jam. The bread machine jam on the right is juicier and has saturated the bread with its syrup. Not a bad thing, but an imperfect thing to use on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It would be perfect stirred into yogurt or drizzled on ice cream though.
I will say that I’ve been absolutely blown away by the quality of the bread that the Zojirushi makes. Of course I couldn’t resist using it to bake up a few loaves while it was hanging out in my kitchen and wow. We haven’t bought bread in weeks thanks to this machine.
I am making jam at church. It will be blessed from the start.
having always wanted to make jam, I made my first attempt about 3 months ago. I used a recipe from mes confitures (strawberry, raspberry juice jam with balsamic vinegar) and followed every step carefully and in the end, I came out with two mason jars of syrup. I guess practice will make perfect one day.
wow, jam and bread. What a pair! I have been dipping my toes into making both this year and have loved it so far.
Wowzas! What an amazing machine! Last year was my first year making jams and I was so in love with the long boil method. I remember having my brand new baby and convincing people to come over and watch him for 45 minutes in exchange for a small jar of fresh hot jam. Best Canning Ever!
After years of seeing our mom make strawberry, raspberry, rhubarb, peach, etc. etc. jam, my sister and I ventured to try ourselves in her college apt. It was 105 deg outside. She had no A/C. And we were hovering over a steamy stove. And the jelly was, at best, mediocre. But this year I am planning on tackling the jam making once again. This would be a lot of fun… to make bread and jam!
My favorite jam making story was a few years ago when I had been dating my boyfriend for about 6 months. He’s from Atlanta and I grew up in the middle of nowhere on 32 acres…since I now live in the DC suburbs I told him I wanted to go to a local pick your own farm to pick some peaches. He was excited by this because being from GA, he loves peaches. Anyway we go to pick peaches and he’s just so excited he wants to pick and pick…and I keep telling him that’s enough… but it’s not enough for him. Once we got to the register and later home with all those peaches, he understood why it was enough. ANYWAY I made two peach pies and three batches of jam and we had plenty to each eat one or two a day for a couple weeks… but he still wants to go pick peaches every year.
While I’ve never had any major jam catastrophes (fingers crossed), I have scored big in the frugal forager jam sweepstakes (haha) for the past few years. My mom hooked me up with a friend of hers who has a 1/4 mile long blackberry bramble – my sister & I, and now our sister-in-law, go picking every year for free berries & girl time. It’s great – minus last year’s downpour that left us soaking wet!
I can’t seem to get a handle on “small batch” cnaning. Every year fruit season rolls around and I swear up and down I’ll be doing just a couple of jars of many flavors of jam rather than large numbers of plain strawberry. Most recently I ended up making jam with some rhubarb, hoping for a pint or three and *poof* ten pints and some leftover for the fridge. Finished at midnight, of course. Oops.
I remember making jam with my parents growing up a loooooong time ago! lol! I would love to make it again and this would be a perfect start!
Last summer, due to job loss, we reluctantly decided to put our house on the market and move in with my parents, 3 1/2 hours south. We emptied the house out, moved down, and my husband promptly got a job back home. He moved back, but we didn’t have the money to hire a truck to move our stuff back home. My parents left on a cross-country trip, and I was left by myself with my 2 kids in the heat of summer, in my parents’ house, and few friends. So, I canned for about 2 months. Peaches, pickles, apricots, raspberries, blueberries – it helped me feel more grounded and gave me something productive and satisfying to do while I waited to move back home. It helped me feel that the summer wasn’t wasted. Now I am starting up again this summer, I just made 2 batches of jam today, and it is bringing back memories from last year.
Thank you for the generous giveaway.
Finger’s crossed I win this one! Favorite canning mishap? When I was making orange marmalade on the bar surface and didn’t notice the juice spilling over the other side onto my carpet!
I made jam exactly once, and have never canned any. It looked a lot like your bread maker jam; time to try again!
hmm, which jam story. Over the last several years I’ve made jam a few times from the blackberries on the family property that was bought by my great-great-great grandparents in 1863. This summer will be my first summer in my new house, and I have lots of wild blackberries in my very own yard to make jam with. I’m very excited.
Another year I snuck into the yard behind my previous house and stole pomegranates to make jelly with. (nobody ever picked them and they’d just eventually fall off the tree and rot.
My favorite is to make jam (and can) with friends! I don’t care where we do it just love spending time laughing and it always makes it go faster 🙂
I don’t think I’d make jam in a Zojirushi, but I’d sure like to make bread in it! My favorite jam moment involved picking through pounds of gleaned (ie., free…) cherries to find those that could be used for jam. Money was tight, and that jam lasted for eighteen months – well worth the effort.
Just moved to California. Looking forward to preserving some of the goodness that grows out here.
I plan to make refrigerator (or is it freezer) strawberry jam this summer. It’s ridiculous the amount of money I spend buying it at the grocery store.
When I decided I wanted to make Pomegranate jam for holiday presents (since I adored poms way before they were trendy and thusly you couldn’t buy a pom jam or jelly locally in Maine) and thus my then fiance and I bought a case of rounded jelly jars, pretty lids to replace the boring ones and a bunch of poms. I cooked it while trying to deal with his mom’s finicky stove and disaster of a kitchen. I worried about it not setting so I overcooked it. It was a lovely pom caramel syrup though.
I have been canning less than a year so I don’t have any good stories yet. Certainly nothing as funny as the time I managed to light Rice Crispy treats on fire! Now that takes amazing culinary prowess 🙂
My very first jam was a caramelized apple jam. It was an overly ambitious and needlessly complicated first recipe. I had to caramelize sugar 2 different times in the same recipe. It didn’t exactly turn out like jam but it has since become very popular with my in-laws as an ice cream topping. I told them all that’s what it was supposed to be 🙂
The very first batch of jam I made by myself was plum jam when I was in high school. I had helped my mom before, but this one I did start to finish by myself. It turned out perfect, and was so proud of it, I was telling everyone. My choir teacher told me “You’re so domesticated, it makes me sick.” Such a lovely woman, bless her heart…
interesting machine. i think my mom might like it. we made strawberry jam outdoors on a camp stove during my daughter’s third birthday party last month. lots of guests all stirring the pot–it was a true community jam. and it was delicious! all guests went home with a little more knowledge, plus a delicious party favor!
Our first house came with a lemon tree and not wanting to waste all those lemons, I learned to preserve lemons. Our second house came with pomegranite trees and not wanting to waste all those pomegranites, I learned to make pomegranite jelly and syrup. We moved into our latest house last year and now have some really nice avocado trees, so not much hope for canning those fruits, but I woundn’t mind having an new bread/jam maker for those trips to the farmer’s market.
I tried making microwave jam one time and thought they said “35 minutes.” I am pretty sure they said “3 to 5 minutes” now. LOL There was smoke pouring out of the microwave. I think that attempting to make it in a bread machine sounds more my speed. 🙂
My own jam making is still future tense, but one of the things I always loved about summers growing up was picking buckets and buckets of plums and blackberries from our yard. The plums were typically made into syrup, but the blackberries (that survived the picking) became jam. My job was to stir and help pour the sealing wax once in jars. I always loved popping the wax disk off on a new jar too!
I’ve been lusting after the Zojirushi bread machine for some time, but it’s just a bit out of my budget’s range right now.
One of my first attempts at strawberry jam resulted in a gob of goo that could have been used as a paperweight and I don’t think there’d even have been concern about the papers getting sticky! That was rather a sad way to learn a lesson about gel points. I’ve gotten much better at judging the jamminess of jams and now friends come asking for my strawberry margarita jam. 🙂
Think you can make margaritas in the Zojirushi?
Last week I went with Scientific approach to apricots and Pomonas pectin… one batch exactly as called for, one with one tsp less pectin and one with 2 tsp less… decided I liked the slightly less than called for amount of pectin… combined with last months scientific approach to the calcium water… (which I determined didnt really matter… at least with frozen berries).. I think I am set to try just about anything with pomonas…
So my first ever attempt at making jam was with raspberries. I ran out of sugar on the second batch, was worrying that it wasn’t going to turn out right, my roommate came home to see me covered in raspberries (face, hair, clothes) and laughed. Then he ate all my jam over the next few months which was supposed to be used as christmas presents. I almost killed him once I realized it was pretty much all gone.
My first time making fancy jam involved a several-day process of making green apple pectin and letting things rest in the fridge. Not thinking things through so well, I let my Winco crate of green apples sit in a cupboard for a very long time before making the pectin and jam. Overripe green apples do not for a good set make. My jam was extremely runny.
My first jam making memory was when I was a little girl. My mother would let me pick my own thimble berries & then mix them up with some sugar & spread it on toast… I felt like such a great chef! I still love making Jam! This year I made strawberry jam, grape Jelly and Orange Marmalade!
I don’t really have any interesting jam making stories. I always make it on the stove, the boring way 😉
I’ve made jam once using an old time method. It ended up being a syrup…but everyone loved it! LOL!!!
Great blog, by the way.
Susan
Wish I had a jam making story. I do promise, however, to tell you the story if I win and have the chance to make some. It’d be an interesting comparison to yours. You, an experienced maker of fine jams using a new machine. And me, an neophyte jam maker trying to make edible jam.
Made my first blueberry/blackberry jam combo last year and it was awesome! Making strawberry jam tomorrow! I’d love to win a Zojirushi! I’ve always wanted one!
I grew up picking blackberries with my mom and aunt to make jam, and now I am teaching my daughter and niece to do the same! There’s just something special about being able to pass down these traditions. =)
last summer i had a friend give us a bunch of lemons from his back yard, so i vowed to make lemon jam and give some back to him. being a total newbie, i overcooked it, and while it is more like lemon crumbly-jam, it’s quite tasty. clearly, more practice is needed by yours truly.
My overzealous partner brought home 2 flats of marionberries last year, which was completely overwhelming, as I’d only made strawberry jam prior to this. Oh yeah, and I had an infant to care for too! Needless to say, I froze a lot of them, but jammed many too! I love how every time I have some on toast, I’m reminded of that time in my life, my little son on one hip, stirring pot after pot of purple-blue sweetness.
Mulberries are dropping in my NYC neighborhood(people want to cut these tress down when the berries drop on the sidewalks.It’s food,people!)and I’ll soon be harvesting & making some jam!I’ll use my grandmother’s Foley food mill to remove some seeds and enjoy
This looks like fun making jam in a zorjirushi. My 5 & 7 year olds like to help make jam and this seems less hazardous than boiling batches on the stove. The latest canning “toy” is a food mill that I got for tomatoes that the kids fought over using and stayed up way past bedtime helping. Thankfully it’s summer break.
One of my favorite childhood memories is going out with my grandmother in Texas to pick wild grapes and watching her make grape jelly to give to her friends. (It never crossed my mind that there might be snakes in those vines!)
I’d love to try making jam in a Zojirushi! And bread!
What a give away!
I’ve actually never made jam. My grandmother canned everything, and most everything we had growing up was home grown and made by her hands. I don’t think I tasted store-bought jam or even ketchup until I was in grade school. That’s why I read this blog: To gain inspiration and the courage to undertake my own canning adventure. So you see, I’m desperately in need of one of these machines in order to better myself and honor my position in motherhood appropriately.
Jam in a bread machine? Wierd.
I haven’t been at this long enough to have any really good jam making stories, so I will share a recent event. A co-worker gifted me a couple of pounds of plums from his backyard tree. I took them home and made a batch of gently spiced plum jam. I returned his container, washed, with a half-pint of jam nestled inside. His kids were amazed that they were eating jam from their own plum tree. It gave me the warm fuzzies.
zmy very first batch of jam was blackberry from the Ball Blue Book. Little did I know that when it calls for a large pot, it means LARGE. I was determined though, and dutifully stirred and checked with the spoon test for the gelling point… and got burned by little splats that weren’t contained by the pot. My kitchen looked like a crime scene afterwards, but lo, I had JAMMED! 🙂
I’m new to the jam making, but I tried a strawberry-balsamic jam recently. The recipe called for 8 cups of strawberries and I bought eight pounds. I have tons and jam now — good thing I like it!
My favorite jam story is my first try at making cherry with out a the advantage of having a cherry pitter. So I used a icing decorator tip on my finger and pitted 10 pounds of cherries. I got so covered in cherry juice that I had to change into a oversized t-shirt and sat on my back porch which caused my husband to laugh for about 2 hours straight. He claimed that I looked like Carrie from the movie based on the Steven King novel. The jam, a cherry amaretto, was fabulous!
I’d love to try my mom’s recipe for Sour Plum Jam made this way — sign me up!
THANKS
Would propping the lid open take care of the runniness?
I tried to make strawberry jam. Having only ever canned one thing before, I wasn’t sure how long to cook, so I cooked and cooked, and cooked…well, I canned it and upon it cooling off, discovered I had made eight lovely jars of strawberry jerky. 🙁
still haven’t made my own jam yet, but I can’t wait to do so. I loved helping my former mother-in-law make strawberry jam in her kitchen, though!
I just make jam in my own pretend mind! Wanna give it a try this year!
I make jam in an unairconditioned kitchen. I think a bread machine like this for making jam to got with my Greek yogurt would be perfection!
My Mother together with her best friend, Lois, made jam every summer when I was a kid. And I am here to claim, jam making is infectious. Both my sister and I still make our jams. Mom and Lois made apricot/pineapple (my favorite then and second favorite now). They made all the berries, too, black, blue, straw, logan, young, and marion. YUM! We would go the local farmer’s market and they bought by the lug and cooked over several days after they got off work.
As I write this I marvel at how much jam we ate. We were five altogether and the larder had rows of jars of jam. Such sweet memories.
Oh, and my favorite jam now is Fig with lemon and thyme….almost fig time around here and it is apricot time now!