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 so glad I was cleaning out my email inbox today and came across this! 🙂 I don’t know about for jam, but I would love a breadmaker.
My husband and I picked a ton of peaches last summer (which were delicious) and what didn’t get eaten up right away got sliced and frozen or made into a small batch of jam. I did the low sugar version and didn’t quite have the proper canning equipment so I did “freezer jam”. It is a bit on the runny side also, but still tasty!
I grew up with a natural foods sort of mom, so we always had homemade jam in the house. As I grew, I tended away from all that for many years, but eventually came back intrigued by the idea of creating my own store of food. One summer, while renting a beach house in Delaware with friends, I read about a pick-your-own blueberry farm. While my friends were all at the beach or at the bar having cocktails I went blueberry picking with my reluctant best friends. We brought the fruit home and she bailed, but I was able to rope my date into making jam with me! We set about making homemade jam in my very ill-equipped rental kitchen and spent a gorgeous afternoon cooped up in a hot, stuffy kitchen. The jam was delicious, the guy was a trooper and I knew that it was true love! He is now my husband, and we’ve shared many other cooking adventures over the years!
I love making jam, but many of my friends are mystified by the idea. I was lucky enough to have two grandmothers who were “into” the whole food preservation/canning thing, and when I was 16/17, I spent a year in Germany with that side of my family. One of the most fun things was helping my aunt and grandmother with the making of jams and other “eingekochte” items. My funny story: my aunt harvested, prepped and canned (froze?) carrots for two days straight, and I couldn’t stand to be in any part of the house where I could smell it, because I *hate* cooked carrots.
The idea of making jam in a bread machine is kind of crazy, but oddly intriguing. Do you suppose it would be possible to make the jam a better consistency if you ran the bread machine with the lid open?
The first time that I ever made jam was with a friend and her mother. Despite coming from a family with a working membership at the local co-op and requisite eight kinds of dried beans in our cupboards, jam was something that came from jars. To see it made in front of me was almost like magic – maybe alchemy is the better word. So thank you to Kathryn and her mom Mary for opening my eyes!
I’ve just started making jams and doing other canning. I’ve learned that the ratios are key to getting your jam to set up properly. I see nothing wrong with pectin. So, the bad news is I have some jams that didn’t set up, like the black cherry. The good news is that the effort is not a total loss as the jam became cherry sauce, which is awesome on ice cream and grilled meats!
Growing up, my aunt Mary would make large batches of strawberry jam every June. She would “borrow” my sister and me, cram us in her tiny car with her three boys, and drive us out to a self-pick farm where were were instructed that at least two berries had to make it into the basket before one in our mouths! Upon returning home, we weren’t dismissed from our duties until all of the strawberry tops were removed. She would spend the rest of the day making jam while we played outside. As an adult, I only make very small batches of jam, but I think of those days every time I stand in the kitchen, cutting the tops off my strawberries.
I’ve dabbled in jam making (strawberry, rhubarb), but haven’t done it a lot. I’d really like to do concord grape this fall.
After a day spent at the ‘pick your own’ farm…. I’m gonna need to be jamming via stove and breadmaker to conquer all this fruit!!!
I am currently figuring out my next project. Apple butter – my first project ever came as a result of apple picking my first fall here in Maine and having WAY too many apples.
We’re experimenting. We made blueberry and blackberry jam last year. The blackberry was to DIE for! This year we made strawberry while they were in season and are planning blackberry and blueberry again – and we’ll have to see what else we come up with.
Growing up my gma would take the grandchildren to the strawberry patch in northern Michigan and had us all help pick strawberries. Sometimes the older ones were allowed to help trim them and take the stems out to prep for the jam making, but she never failed to mention if we were wasting too much of the berry by not being careful with our pairing knives. About 1 quart jar is consumed at every family function, with most of us hoping she will offer us a jar when we are home to visit.
I to have a jam obsession, so much that it led to this.
http://eatincolor.blogspot.com/2011/05/fresas.html
I love using the slow cooker to make jams and fruit butters, but my first attempt at jam was a freezer jam. It ended up more as an apple chutney, which was delicious over yogurt, but not quite what I was going for!
My first jamming experience was actually in a chemistry lab over a bunsen burner. To say that it was perhaps less than appetizing jam might be an understatement–blueberries, a lab partner, and one blazing hot blue flame do make an interesting first jam story though!
I’ve only made freezer jam…but I’d love to try making cooked jam!
I never actually made jam, but I found this by googling it because I’d like to learn how…I would love to be entered, hope I’m eligible. Thank you!
My Grandmothers used to make jam, but I’ve never tried it. It seems like so much work. I would love to try to make some in this bread machine.
I am a newbie jam maker- just made my fist batch of pineapple peach mint jam this week and it turned out fabulously!! Now all I need is a bread machine to make lots of homemade bread for all my jams!
Honestly, I’ve never made jam by myself. I remember wanting to help so badly when I was a kid, watching my mother work her magic in the kitchen. I didn’t know it was possible to do it in a bread maker!! This would definitely be a new adventure for me. 🙂 I would love it.
i just made your small batch strawberry vanilla jam and im so excited to actually try it. ive also been attempting to switch to all homemade bread as well but have had mixed results and have been considering a bread maker. this would be outstanding!
My jam making experience is pretty much buying it at the farmers market and lusting after everything on this site! Who knows, one day I’ll work up the courage. Maybe. Now bread I can handle!
Love my Zojirushi rice cooker, would love to have a bread machine as well!!
My favorite recipe this summer has been your orange-rhubarb butter! My rhubarb variety was a lot more green than yours, so it turned out a little brown-green in the end (my friend called it “turd butter,” THANKS) but so delicious.
It is SO SO SO time for me to move beyond the jam-making-with-training-wheels freezer jam – the Zo sounds like the next step!
Seeing your strawberry jam experiment brings back great memories of my mother making strawberry jam when I was a kid (sans bread machine). I can remember to this day how sweet and delicious it tasted! I have a bread machine with a jam setting. I should give it a try!
I have never heard of making jam in a bread machine, I’m very intrigued. My favorite jam this year is strawberry lavender!
I made mulberry jam this week and it was a complete fail. However, I have the pretties purple/magenta colored mulberry pancake syrup you’ve ever seen!
I had my first go at plum jam last year when my plum tree was just overrun with plums.
So, not so great – kind of tart/ sour and a little too runny. Still ended up with 4 jars that I finished throughout the year though! I’ve been eyeing my plum tree now, just waiting for them and playing with different recipes (in my mind) to improve last years’ recipe. I’d LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to get this machine to see what I can do… Thanks!!
Oh, I have been dreaming of a Zojirushi bread machine for such a long time. I hope I win it! As for jam… I once bought a very expensive, importd can of Seville oranges from Williams-Sonoma. It was marketed as a product to turn into marmalade. Well, despite adding the instructed 5 lbs. of sugar, it was still the most bitter tasting stuff I ever ate! After that, only fresh oranges in my marmalade!
The first jam I ever made was from your site! Last August, I bought a Ball discovery kit, found your blog, and now I’m a canning convert! The coffee shop I work in uses Zojurushi appliances to heat water for tea to very specific temperatures. They make great machines.
Going to buy strawberries in the morning to make strawberry-rhubarb jam! And since I have a mountain of rhubarb I’m also going to try the Orange Rhubarb butter recipe–I’ve been inspired to try several recipes from your blog this summer. But I have never made jam in a bread machine!
I learned a very important lesson the first year I made jam. Don’t do it with a teenager and a two year old. We were making peach jam and the fact that the teenager was NOT watching the two year old and instead wanted to help me was not a good thing as I originally envisioned. Instead he put the peaches in the boiling water for tooooo long and really over cooked them needless to say after that my husband thought that the art of jam making was lost on me. Much to his surprise my next venture was much much much better. So much so he wanted to know why the other attempt was sooooo horrible. Oh well you live and learn! This year when I make peach jam there will be no teenagers involved, only my 5kids!
I’ve made jam in a bread machine before but I don’t think I’d thought about it being runny, but it was texturally different than stove top jam. Zojirushi is the best as far as bread machines go. Would love to own one, especially since I really like making bread machine bread. Sure saves money for the family.
I’m new to your blog. Thanks for all of the pantrying inspiration.
I don’t remember life without canning, my grandmother canned 800 qts a year on a woodstove. My mother worked at the school and had summers off so we all worked in the garden and canned everything it produced. I did the same and even though my children are grown and on their own they look forward to the jars of canned goods I give them, but the real fun is jam and jelly. I live near a woods that provide me wild grapes, wild plums and chokecherries as well as wild raspberries. Went a little crazy last year so may need to cut back a little this year! Love your blog.
I love this idea, and I have really been enjoying your blog. Thanks so much for the giveaway!
I love bread making but havent had time lately (the life of a student) so this bread maker would be awesome! I haven’t started my jam making for the season either (once again, busy busy!) but cannot wait for blackberry season, last year I made a gorgeous blackberry apple I was so proud of and can’t wait to work with.
I’ve never made jam but would love to in this machine!!
You are such a great experimenter, Marisa! Wow, I’d have never thought to try making jam in the bread machine. Let’s see, jam story: I tried peach pit jelly last year, trying to stretch my meager batch of peaches as far as I could. It jelled up just fine, but the taste was pretty bland. This year I tried lemon poppyseed jelly, with the lemons from our dwarf tree, and it was outstanding! In a couple days we are heading out to pick olallieberries. I try to make gobs and gobs of it, enough to last the year, but somehow we always seem to run out around April. Happy jamming!
I would love to make bread and jam in a bread machine. Please put me in the drawing. Last year I made blueberry jam with out pectin, it ended up almost a candy. I can add water and microwave it but it isn’t quite the jam to be proud of. Thanks
Last summer I taught my older daughter and my soon-to-be daughter-in-law how to make raspberry jam…my new daughter-in-law made 125 jars of strawberry jam to give away at her wedding to my youngest son, and my daughter now makes BACON jam…! Our times together in the kitchen are treasured, to be sure!! LOVE your blog, which I just read for the first time today!! Thank you for entering me in the drawing!!
Many moons ago, I asked my great-grandmother to show me how to make jam. She said I should just buy it from the store, it was so much work! Years later, a friend gave me raspberry freezer jam, and I ate it all in one day with a spoon… I was hooked and now I make it regularly. But I wish I could have shared the experience with my Grandma.
What a fantastic idea to use a camp stove, especially when it’s blistering outside and heating up the kitchen sounds like a bad idea. I finally found time to start jamming and jellying and am completely hooked. I also pickle and will soon pickle an awesome batch of beets from the veggie garden.
Love your site!
I just starting making jam and am loving it! Last week I picked strawberries with my 2 kids and together we made a nice batch of jam. I can’t get over how red and beautiful it is. Honestly, I have been caught eating it by the spoonful……
Michigan strawberries are in, and this week was filled with the red little bobbles mixed with some sugar and vanilla bean. The 48 jars of jam are still on the counter, ready to be labled and tucked away. And when the counter is cleared off, a new bread machine would surely look grand in that spot.
I have no story as it has been in my own kitchen and without much fanfare. But my best memory is growing up and my best friends Mom making grape jam (she used the wax on top in those days) and it was the best tasting jam I ever had. Jam making was sort of unheard of in the 70’s in our ‘modern’ burbs but it left me with a desire years later to learn.
I used to help my grammy make Peach Sunshine Jam in the summers when I was a child. I would stir and stir and label the jar lids, and help move them all to the ‘root cellar’. I ate that sunshine jam on just about everything.
I’ll try my luck. May I be a winner?
Oh! I just remembered my one and only epic jam failure. I had a recipe for pineapple lime marmalade that I’d found somewhere on the ‘net. And it sounded delish. So I made it. It took freaking forEVER for it to get thick enough, and when I finally canned it, it never set up. I had to follow the instructions to remake the jam and I added more sugar along with the additional pectin. Turns out the jam was really awful. It included grapefruit and really all you could taste was the acidity of the grapefruit. Bleah. It made about 2 dozen jars, too. I ended up throwing about almost all 2 dozen! (I still can’t figure out what went wrong. But it was totally gross!)
Up until I was 12, we lived in a house that had a small patch of raspberry bushes at the bottom of the driveway. Their appearance was always anticipated and celebrated. One year, my mom decided we should make jam. We eagerly stirred, watched the color become richer and richer, started visualizing the marriage it would have with peanut butter and….must have left it on too long. It ended up as hard candy! We could barely detach it from the pot we had stewed it in. Nevertheless, we happily chewed on our mistake for the rest of the week.
Since discovering your blog, I have been on a jam making frenzy. I now have over 4 cases in my pantry. I started with the strawberry vanilla jam, did a strawberry balsamic with and without the black pepper, blueberry with lime, and your strawberry rhubarb recipe. I was looking for a new and different take on fig jam–I have 10 lbs. in my freezer I needed to use before this season’s fruit comes in, and that’s when I found the jam with wines sites. I have made a batch of pineapple with pino, and fig in homemade red wine (from our grapes and our fig trees). We still have several bottles of pink champagne from our daughter’s wedding. I am considering a champagne pear recipe–it looks beautiful. I gained 5 lbs sampling each on slabs of homemade bread. (I am backing off for a few weeks to fit back into my jeans. But after that, I will be back on the hunt. ) An upgrade on the bread machine would only add to the joy of the journey! It would be awesome! Thanks for a great blog!
I’ve made lots of blueberry and strawberry jam the old-fashioned way, but would love to try it in the breadmaker! Really wanting to try a cherry jam….ahh heaven! 🙂