WOW! I think I'll give it a shot. I love home made bread.
The recipe I use makes 3 loaves at a time, and even though we go through that in a week, it goes bad before we use it all. So, I wrap each loaf in plastic wrap (wrapped well), put 2 in the freezer and leave one out. Ta da!
Speaking of bread, I saw an episode of Baking with Julia this morning and they made baguettes. I think I'll be making that Monday. I made pizza today, made coffee cake tonight, making sandwich bread tomorrow, and was asked to make garlic knots for a teacher appreciation lunch for Thursday. How long will it take before I'm sick of my kitchen? Place your bets.
...Is it worth getting a cheap bread machine or will that not have that right & proper bread texture?
You should have seen my first loaves about a year or so ago. Very sad indeed.As my wife always says "make <insert food item here> 1000 times and the 1001 will be perfect"
Making bread by hand isn't rocket science, it is time consuming though.
But soon enough you get the hang of it and you're cranking out bread like there's no tomorrow.
Today we've got 12 loaves of Honey Oat bread on the go. Starting at 8 am they'll all be done by noon. No mystery, just practice to develop the skill.
....as per usual when I say "we" I mean my wife.
Why, thank you.Now that's a nice loaf!
yummy
Scaling from a bread machine to oven baking is not very difficult. The hard part is that the baking times and temperature are not listed...but if you bake bread regularly you probably know those. I rarely use the oven to bake bread, so I would have to look up all this. I have scaled from the bread machine to the oven before without problems, using a kitchen aid mixer.
Going the other way is more difficult because a typical bread machine can only work a maximum of 3 cups of flour, and you need to apply a little math to divide a recipe to between 2 and 3 cups of flour, with convenient units for the other ingredients. (Eggs like to be used whole) Also a number of old bread recipes do not account for the flour added while manually kneading.
That is a pretty loaf Crafty.
Phil
I make this white bread.
3 to 3 1/2 cup flour
2 1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/4 cup milk
3 to 4 tble butter
pinch or dash of salt
1 tbl honey
bake at 425 Fahrenheit for 30 minutes
viola! classic white bread for toasts and sandwitches
... twelve loaves? I have a lot of respect for your wife right now. And your oven.
Bannock is another option, using flour and baking powder and any combination of honey, nuts and dried fruits.
Don't like to bake it in oil (frybread-type bannock) as that sits too heavy in my stomach.
Takes about 10-15 minutes to make, start to finish. Nicer and healthier than supermarket cookies.
How many loafs will this make? I mixed it up last night and have been letting it expand today.
Bread with some fat in it has a longer shelf life than those that don't, and adding a little liquid lecithin can help too. If your bread is heavy there are several things you should check: first, is your yeast good? Or are you killing the yeast by mixing the and/or proofing the dough at too warm a temperature? Or are you letting it rise for too little time or at too cool a temperature? The most common mistake would be dissolving the yeast in too warm water, adding the wrong amount of flour, and not letting the dough rise enough at the right temperature.
I've never seen bread made in a machine that was as good as what I can make the old-fashioned way, even though I "cheat" now by starting the kneading in a mixer and finish it by hand. For sandwich bread, there's an old book called the Tassajara Bread Book that is still golden, imho.