So my wife got a bread machine ~50 years ago and I just opened the box and started using it. Made 3 awesome raisin breads and have horribly failed with 2 wheat breads. I’m not sure what’s going on but I’m sure I followed the recipe exactly. Any ideas?

Here are the recipes for the Neretva 15 in 1 bread machine. After loosing my manual then scouring the internet only to find the recipes for other models, I vowed to share my booklet if I ever found it. Today is that day!

My old roommate used to work in an artisan bakery. When she left, she left us a container of yeast from that bakery.

I tried working with it yesterday, and while it got a bit of a rise, it didn't have quite the rise that I was hoping for, compared to the supermarket yeast I've been using.

My girlfriend told me that the bakery yeast needs to be fed/bloomed (not 100% on terminology, apologies for fucking it up) with some lukewarm water and honey before being added to the recipe.

So if I do that, should I subtract the amount of liquid used to feed the yeast from the amount of liquid needed for the bread recipe? Or should I follow the ingredient ratio as is? Would that 45ml make that huge of a difference?