The Bread Machine

I have always gazed in envious wonder at other peoples bread machines.

How do they work?
Does the bread taste good?
Do you really just put the ingredients in, push the buttons and at some later time bread comes out?
How amazing is that!!

After mentioning my secret desire to have a bread machine to a friend of mine she arrived at my door a week or so later with one just for me! She had found hers at a thriftstore and I had said that I would love to find one too. I am a very thrifty shopper and I have no problem using items from a second hand store.

So ... ta da! She had found me a perfectly wonderful clean working bread machine at a thriftstore for almost nothing. She is great and so is the machine.



Below is an image of the dough in the bread machine before baking. Sephie, the friend who gave me the machine uses hers mostly for making dough. She then shapes and bakes the dough herself in the oven. I have decided that I like that too. Although, I am going to try at least once to make a full loaf in the machine, just to see what happens.



It really is as simple as placing the ingredients into the machine and pressing a button. I set the machine to the dough setting and walk away. In about an hour and a half the beeper goes off and the dough is ready. Then I take it out of the machine, place it on a lightly floured surface and knead for about 30 seconds while shaping it into whatever shape I want. The below image is of the first hearth loaf I made with my new machine. The entire ball of dough is placed on a floured baking sheet, and given an egg wash before going into the oven.



This size of a loaf takes about 45 minutes to bake. It came out of the oven perfect! Notice the little spikes at the top of the loaf. That was because I cut an x shape in the dough before baking. It looks kinda like a volcano. HA. The next loaf I made I decided to cut three parallel slices in the top of the dough and it looked more like the style of bread you would get from a bakery. Much less like a volcano. The below image is of the volcano inspired hearth loaf.



The bread tasted great, smelled wonderful and looked beautiful. Aside from the wait time while the dough was in the machine and of course the 45 minute bake time, my physical involvement was only about 10 minutes. I was able to go do other things while the dough was being created. Then it was just a few minutes to get the dough into the oven. I went and did other things again while it was baking. This is so easy. I love it and so does the family.

Thanks Sephie!