I have owned a bread machine for at least ten years. It has been one of the best kitchen appliances I have ever used. I use it almost everyday, as we always have fresh bread. One of the best things about the machine is that I can take a basic bread recipe, add a few things and make unlimited new breads.
You can pick up a great machine at a mass merchandiser from $50.00 up to a couple hundred. While I would love to have a fancy one, I have a rather simple one with several different settings. Each setting has its own time cycle, heating temperature and kneading times. Read the owners manual to get familiar with it.
Most times, I use my basic setting, which on my machine lasts 3 hours. A basic recipe for white bread is 4 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of yeast, 1-1/2 cup of warm water, 2 teaspoons of salt, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of butter. Regardless of what the recipe calls for, put the water, sugar and yeast in first. Give it a quick stir and allow the yeast to come alive. The water will activate the yeast, the yeast will eat the sugar and you will see a bubbly foam form in the pan. This whole process takes about 10 minutes and while it is working, I get my other ingredients together. Next, put the butter, flour, and salt. Always put the salt in last, it will kill the yeast, so you want it to stay away form the yeast as long as possible.
When you search around on the internet, there are thousands of recipes. I am always looking for new variations to my basic list. This week I made potato bread. But instead of plain potatoes, I used instant sweet potatoes. The bread came out great and to go along with it, I made a compound butter with brown sugar and honey. This on the sweet potato bread, a cake it almost made!
Are they worth the money? Yes. Instead of the bread in the plastic bag being thrown out when it molds, we have fresh bread daily. If a loaf does hang around for a couple days and goes stale, I run it through the food processor and make bread crumbs. It gets used and is never thrown out.
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4 comments:
I have a brand new bread machine and I need to use it. I have only tried using it twice. I have tasted some of the bread you have made with your machine and it is delicious. Thanks for these tips. I am going to print this off!
dette
Wow what a good idea. Several years ago I found a new bread machine at a yard sale. It has not been used in about 2 years because I put the recipt/instruction booklet away for safe keeping...You know the rest of the story.
I have got to get my bread machine down and use it again after reading this. I was never one much for bread until I got my machine a couple years ago and then of course I fell in love with making homemade bread. I can make a meal just from hot fresh bread slathered with butter (okay, okay, I usually use the margarine in the tubs but when I have homemade bread I splurge sometimes and buy real butter to put on it).
I do not have a bread machine but I would use one a lot if I did. I love bread, especially homemade bread! I make my own sourdough bread and we could make a meal off the bread and butter. Ha ha. I make all our dinner bread. We now longer waste money on dinner bread, rolls, or garlic bread. We were spending a small fortune on it and then, as you mentioned, having to throw out molded bread. One bag of bread flour costs no more than a loaf of dinner bread or package of rolls and will make 6 loaves of bread!
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