August: Potlucks!

August Theme: Potlucks. What do you take with you?

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Perfect Bread Machine Loaf

A couple of people seemed interested in this recipe so I thought I'd better post it. It took me a long time to figure out my bread machine. We got it for our wedding and my first several tries with it were total disasters so I gave up. Finally, I guess about a year ago, I was trying to start making my own bread to use food storage wheat and I was having a hard time finding time to make it by hand all the time. I kept experimenting, and I was able to figure out how to make good bread the super-easy way. To keep the crust from getting too hard, I take the loaf out when the timer says 20-25 minutes, not zero! (this probably depends on the machine, but don't trust it, watch it yourself to see if it looks done) The stupid bread machine totally overcooks it. To keep the loaf from falling in, add gluten flour (1 T per cup flour). Don't try to make 100% whole wheat bread. It works fine if you want to make the dough by hand or in the machine and then bake it in the oven, but for some reason it never turns out right in the machine. I like my normal program better than the whole wheat cycle, even for whole wheat bread. I make this bread a couple of times every week. Now I can't even stand to eat store-bought bread, this is so much better!

1 1/4 c warm water
1 T sugar or honey
2 T oil or butter
1 1/2 t salt
1 1/4 c bread flour
2 c whole wheat flour
2 T gluten flour
1/2 c instant potato flakes
2 1/2 t yeast

Put all of the ingredients into the pan, and set the program. You're done! The machine does the rest.

1 comment:

Tessa said...

Maybe I should have said 1-2 T sugar, I use a pretty heaping tablespoon.