Bread Machine Joys

Ah, the smell of fresh bread! French? Whole wheat? Sweet? It matters not, as long as it is fresh and coming from your own kitchen. How delightful it is to use your own fresh ingredients to make delicious loaves of bread in your very own bread machine. I chose the Oster brand for it’s reputation, price and good recommendations. After opening the box, I was pleasantly surprised to find a relatively small manual with easy to understand instructions. I learned that the ingredients must be at room temperature, so it is important to plan when you want to make your bread. Refrigerator cold yeast or butter or milk will yield a most unsatisfactory loaf of bread. Have the mixing bowl on the counter rather than already snapped into the machine, because it would be too easy to spill ingredients into places they should not go. It’s safer to add everything while the bowl is on the counter. The instructions remind the user to measure all ingredients carefully. Even a little too much water or flour will result in a sticky dough that will not respond well to kneading. After deciding which type of bread to make, assembling the room temperature ingredients and measuring all ingredients with care, add the ingredients to the machine bowl in order, according to the recipe. Be extra sure that the blade is inserted into the bowl! It would be a sad day in your kitchen to have added everything to the bowl, only to find that the blade was still sitting on the kitchen counter. You must then snap the bowl into the machine. By that time, you may be so anxious to have fresh bread that you want to select the ExpressBake function. That is certainly an option but only if you have used rapid rise yeast. The wait time drops from three and a half hours to about an hour and a half when using rapid rise. The only problem is that most recipes call for the regular yeast. Be certain you are using the correct yeast for your recipe! You then select the type of bread you are making, and your preference for crust color; light, medium or dark. It is a pleasure to just press start, knowing that within a couple of hours, you will have a loaf of hot bread ready to be cut. And you didn’t have to get your hands all sticky or wear out your shoulders kneading by hand! As the cycle moves from mixing to kneading to baking, the aroma of fresh bread will permeate the house. The window in the cover of the bread machine affords you a good view through each cycle. But raising the cover is not a good idea. Just stand there and watch through the window, all the while anticipating just how good your bread will taste. Once the bread machine beeps, indicating that your loaf is baked and ready, carefully remove the bowl. It will be hot, as it actually is an oven in which your bread baked. Give the bowl a little jiggle and your bread should pop right out. Let it sit on a cooling rack for as long as you can possibly wait. If you simply cannot wait longer than five seconds, carefully cut the loaf of hot bread with a good, sharp knife. Your butter should be waiting at your fingertips. Then sweet bliss! There is nothing in the world like a slice of fresh, hot, homemade bread, with butter slathered all the way to each corner. The aroma is enticing and the taste? Even better.

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