Bread Machine Jam!

OK OK I’m a little late with this feature. We’ve been super-busy. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to slow down a little bit during the next two months. I keep meaning to put together this feature and here goes. We made jam with our bread machine. To be more specific, we used some plums from a tree in our back yard to make jam. We made it without a lot of sugar, too. If you get the right kind of pectin, you don’t have to add a ton of sugar to get your jam to thicken up.

Here’s what you need: Some fruit, sugar, lemon juice, pectin, and water. And a breadmaker. The pectin we use is Pomona’s Universal Pectin. As mentioned above, this is a special pectin which lets you cut down the sugar in the recipe. It uses calcium to activate it. We did it with plums, but you can use about anything. For jams, you can use kiwi, strawberry, raspberry, gooseberry, blackberry, currant, cherry, plum, pineapple, mulberry, blueberry, pear, mango, peach, apricot, fig, or citrus fruit (for marmalades). For jelly, you could use apples, quince, blackberries, pomegranate, raspberry, currants, grapes, or peppers. We used our Zojirushi bread machine, but most other bread machines also have the ability to make jam. You can get the pectin on Amazon, but we got ours at Whole Foods.

Here’s our recipe:

Low Sugar Plum Jam – Bread Machine

• 2 cup cubed, mashed plums (about 16 small plums)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup + 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tsp pectin powder
• 2 tsp calcium water

(The calcium water is some regular tap water with calcium powder that comes with the Pomona’s pectin. You make that beforehand.)

1. Cut up plums in 1/8ths and microwave for a few minutes to soften. Mash plums briefly.
2. Add lemon juice and calcium water to plums.
3. Add pectin to sugar.
4. Put all ingredients in bread machine, set on Jam Setting, and press start.

• Resulting Batch – 2 1/2 c
• Prep Time – 20 min
• Cooking Time – 1 1/4 hrs
• Total Time – 1 hr 35 min
• Difficulty – Semi Easy

Here is a helpful card with recipes and instructions that you can download from Pomona’s website (it’s a PDF).

How is the jam, you ask? The jam is AMAZING! Also, Sienna went through the trouble to put the jam in canning jars. She had a lot of fun.