Dot - or anyone else having a similar problem -
If your bread is too salty, reduce the salt. If it's not sweet enough,
increase the sweetener. Salt, sugar (or honey), and yeast are all pretty
flexible ingredients -- you needn't follow them to the letter. I never
measure, ever.
The only problem could happen if:
* you had no salt, the loaf would rise out of control
* you had no natural sugar (sugar, honey, molasses, whatever) the yeast
wouldn't
be activated so the dough wouldn't rise much (ditto if there was way too
little yeast)
* you have too much yeast the dough could rise high and collapse before
baking,
making a flat, dense loaf
That last one is doubly unfortunate since the typesetter and copyeditor on
the first edition of my book were, how do I say, not good. The "t" in the
yeast measurment of each recipe was listed arbitrarily as either "T" or "t"
(you would really think a cookbook copyeditor would have known THIS MAKES A
DIFFERENCE!). There were other problems involving typos in amounts as well,
but fortunately that edition is long gone and the book, now in it's third
printing, is accurate.
-Elizabeth Harbison
THE BREAD MACHINE BAKER