Bread Makers- Start Your Day Right

My brother and his wife have always kept up with the most modern, time or money saving appliances. I have always humored them. Visiting in the late 90’s, I had my first taste of warm, fresh bread from a bread machine. I still remember the sweet, enticing aroma of homemade banana bread wafting up the stairs at 7:00 in the morning mingling with the companion coffee. My grandmother used to say, “A day that starts with fresh bread will be a productive day.” Now about this time my brother needed a cheap car to get back and forth to his training school. We had an older car which we gave to him. Out of gratitude he gave us a Zojirushi Bread Maker. I couldn’t believe how simple it was to make a melt in your mouth banana bread or a pizza dough, or soft pretzels or any of the literally hundreds of things that I have created over the years with the help of this machine. At first I was put off by the odd, square shaped loaf that was produced. Soon I got the hang of cutting perfect slices every time. The bread from our machine makes a very thing crust which no child has ever asked me to trim. The butter bread recipe makes the most delicious finger sandwiches ever to grace a church luncheon table. Using the dough setting we made giant spider soft pretzels for the preschool Halloween party. We have made Easter bread, Christmas bread and dinner rolls. I really don’t know how much money we have saved over the years by making our own bread, but I know we have saved a substantial amount by making our own pizza. Not only does the dough mix completely and is ready to roll out for the kids to make their own favorite creations, but at $9.00 for a cheese pizza in our area, I know it’s a bargain. My garlic pizza is famous in the neighborhood. It’s hard to believe that something that takes up so little space could make such a huge difference in our every day lives. It takes less than 5 minutes to throw the ingredients in the machine and set the timer so that the morning starts off with wholesome, mouth watering, warm bread. On Sundays, I get up to find the perfect dough ready to be buttered for cinnamon rolls. You can probably tell that I really love my bread machine. In the past 18 odd years, I’ve often thought that I’d someday have to replace this maker. Too bad my brother’s car didn’t last this long!

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