Posted: 6/23/2009 5:03:12 PM EDT
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For a wedding present my wife and I received a bread machine from some friends. We put it to use a few days back, starting out with the first (and probably easiest) recipe –– plain white bread. It came out perfectly, so since then we've made a second loaf of the white bread, and we tried a loaf of cinnamon swirl, which didn't have as much swirl as we had hoped (really hard to take the dough down to 1/4" thick to put the sugar, cinnamon, and raisins on –– we only had one really thick swirl).
My father made bread in bread machines when I was younger, and I'm glad I'm doing the same thing now. The smell of fresh bread baking really makes quite the wonderful aroma in our apartment. A few shots, just because I'm a photo kinda guy. 
And one last shot...the accompanying pork roast we had for dinner that night.  The smell of the BBQ sauce we were using in the slow-cooker plus the bread baking...mmmmmm...........
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Here is the third loaf of bread I've done –– a cinnamon & raisin swirl (recipe in the book). The front cover of the instruction manual for the bread machine has a photo of this recipe, so we decided to give it a shot.
As it turns out, they didn't use raisins (they are listed as option in the recipe) so when they rolled up the dough before the last rise cycle it looked perfect. Our raisins bunched up and so we only got one swirl. 
Tasted fine, but didn't look as nice as I'd hoped. Oh well...I won't complain, it was my first try with anything "fancy". 
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I hated my bread maker. Gave it to the VFW for an auction thing they had. Think I used it about 4-5 times. Found the easy bread recipe http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=10&f=19&t=618889 and have been hooked. Less yeast, a bit of planning, and great artisan bread. Been playing with the yeast content wheat flour content and rising time. founs 1/3 wheat flour and then a dusting for the release from the towel works great... For what its worth, this is the best and easiest recipe I have found yet for bread. I have it committed to memory now. |