My mom gave me her bread machine that she bought a couple of years back. She didn't use it very much, but I really wanted to try to start making some bread on my own.
If you've never used a bread machine before, it's super easy: all you have to do is have the right amount of ingredients, pour them into the machine pan in order that the recipe list calls for them, and press a button to indicate what type of bread you're making (therefore enabling a bread-making process specific to whole wheat, French, etc.). I've tried a couple of different loaves so far but hope to do a few more so I can figure out which one we like best. Whole wheat was extremely heavy, so I'm not sure that I'll do that one in the machine again. White was good, but still (in my opinion), pretty heavy.
I think next time I'll try French and we'll see how it turns out. In an ideal situation, we would find the bread we like the best and I'd make a loaf or so every week to use for sandwiches. Bread is just getting too expensive at the store and we just don't make it down to the outlet shop very often. Plus, this is still healthier than eating the bread with all the preservatives. We don't eat a lot of sandwiches or toast anyway, so I'm thinking this might work out okay. If we can find something we like.
I have a few friends who use bread machines/make bread for their families' sandwich needs. Which type do you think is best? How much do you make a week?
Someone that I know (who makes bread the old-fashioned way in the oven) told me that at first making your own bread instead of buying it at the store can be sort of a burden. She decided to make two loaves for herself every Saturday night and that's all she needed for the week. After about a month of doing it weekly, it just becomes habit. She's been doing it for years and doesn't mind anymore.
Thoughts/comments?
Oh...and as an added bonus, you can see what everyone else in my house did while I made bread both times:
We rarely use our bread machine for making bread...we always use the dough option and make pizza dough. One think that Kim and Phil do is they mix their wheat flour and their white flour when they make their own bread. One tip that everyone tells me to keep your bread crust from being too hard is putting it in a Ziploc bag right after to take it out...it helps to soften the crust a little. Again, we don't make much bread in ours but we still love it...it saves us a ton from buying pizza ;).
ReplyDeleteWe did make Cinnamon Raisen bread once & it was way yummy! Good Luck!