Bread Machine Mixes
Ummm! The smell of fresh baked bread! Let’s face it; there really isn’t a much better smell. Wouldn’t you love to smell that in your own kitchen?
You don’t know how to bake bread, you say? Well its not difficult at all as long as you have the right ingredients and the right equipment.
I have always liked homemade bread but I was intimidated by the unknown process and the “mystery” of the rising and proofing and baking. I thought it was just easier to go to the local bakery and pick up a loaf and bring it home. That is until someone gave me this wonderful Bread Machine for Christmas! That was all it took! I was hooked!! Carb heaven, it was!
Bread machines take all of the guesswork out of the process of baking bread at home, but you still have to follow recipes before you start mixing, kneading, resting, and
baking. The trouble with putting together a batch from scratch is that if you don’t measure just right, the bread may not come out right. You see, baking is more of an exact
science than regular cooking. I have cooked all my adult life and I hardly ever follow a recipe exactly. I throw a “little of this” a “little of that” into the bowl or pot
and it usually comes out pretty good. My wife makes an incredible marinara sauce….the weird thing is, she doesn’t make it the same each time, but it still tastes pretty much the same!
The way to get around the hassle of measuring and calculating what ingredients go into making bread is to use a pre-packaged bread machine mix. They are a convenient way to have home baked bread without all the mess and mistakes. Bread machine mixes have come a long way since the first bread machines were introduced. Actually, so have the Bread Machines! But that’s another story! The quality of the mixes is only out paced by the variety available. You can get a mix for just about any type of bread that you can imagine. What kind of bread do you like? Wheat? White? Pumpernickel? Rye? Poppy Seed? What about the sweet breads? Raisin? Blueberry? Cinnamon Sugar? The list goes on and on. When you have decided on the type of bread you want, just follow the instructions on the package and let the bread machine do the rest. The bread machine will mix, kneed, and bake the bread. All these processes are controlled by a little on board computer in the machine. This takes all the guess work out of the whole process. For most people, this is as far as they want to go, which is perfectly fine! But if you want to be a little creative, you can let the machine do all the work, except the baking.
You see, because of the shape of the inside of the bread machine, all of your loaves will look very similar. Most of the machines have a square bottom and a dome lid, so that’s what all your loaves are going to look like. If, however, you take the dough out of the machine right before the baking stage, you can shape your loaf into any shape you like, such as long, french baguette, or even bread sticks! You can then bake them in your oven and you will have a unique loaf of bread while still not having to do much
work.
I hope you try baking fresh bread in your own kitchen soon. It is a really rewarding thing to do and it tastes great!
You are encouraged to click on the informative links on the right of this page to learn more about this wonderful technique.