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What do you normally spread on your bread? Butter, peanut butter, Nutella, cheese, jam, or maybe nothing at all? Well if you enjoy putting jam then you will be glad to learn how to make jam with your newly purchased bread machine!

All bread machines – at least every single one that we’ve reviewed so far – come with a special setting to make jam. Most people find it surprising but this is possible because the bread machine has everything you would need to make jam – a heat source and a mixing blade. Bread machines are great for making jam because the whole process is automated and you can save a lot of time. Moreover, you can control what you put in the jam and some people like to add less sugar than store-bought jams.

The ingredients you need to prepare are:

• Fruits such as berries, mango, peaches, oranges, etc. Basically anything works but make sure you cut up larger fruits into small pieces. Some people like to blend it smooth, so it really depends on what texture you want.
• Sugar (1:1 ratio with fruit or less if you don’t like jams too sweet).
• Pectin to help the jam set. If you’re using fruit that naturally contains pectin (blueberries, white currants, black currants, red currants, gooseberries) you might not have to add any or add only a few grams, otherwise you’ll need to add 10-13 grams of pectin for fruits such as strawberries and raspberries per recipe.

You’ll basically add the ingredients into the bread machine and wait for it to make jam. There should be a “jam” setting on your machine. It’s much easier to use a bread maker to make jam because you don’t have to deal with the sticky clean up in using pots. This tends to get messy. On average, it takes about 1 hour for the machine to make two jars of jam.

When you go to jar the jams, try to use glass bottles and make sure you sterilize them by boiling them for 5-10 minutes in hot water. Don’t forget to do the same for the lids.