AS GOOD AS SLICED BREAD

 

 

There is nothing as good as fresh homemade bread; and toast made from homemade bread is excellent.     

My wife and I have been making bread in bread machines for thirty-five years.   We bought our first bread machine when we taught school in a remote Athabaskan Indian village in bush Alaska, where store-bought bread was not available. 

 

 Our bread contains water, flour, honey, salt, butter and yeast.

 

Our breads don’t contain Triticale Flour, Monoglyceride, enzymes, ascorbic acid, amaranth, monocalcium phosphate, soy lectin, calcium sulfate, niacin reduced Iron, thiamin mononitrate, high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, sodium sterol lactate, calcium sterol lactylate, monoglycerides, calcium peroxide iodate, datem, ethoxylate, mono and diglycerides, enzymes, ascorbic acid, ammonium sulfate vinegar, dextrose sugar, hydrogenated soybean oil or calcium propionate…  

 

For years we had a Breadman Ultra bread machine and got excellent results, but after ten years the machine finally gave up the ghost.  We immediately looked for another Breadman bread machine and ordered it through Walmart.   The new Breadman machine was a piece of junk.  It had a collapsible paddle that would come off in the dough during mixing.  The beauty of ordering through Walmart was that we could return it locally.   We replaced the Breadman with a Cuisinart bread maker and it is excellent.   It has a cycle that warns you if you want to remove the paddle before baking.   Every loaf has turned out spectacular.

 

One of the aggravations with homemade bread is slicing.  Sometimes the slices turn out different widths, or thicker on one side than the other.   So, last week I went on line to see if there was a better, more consistent way to slice home made bread, and found a plastic slicing guide for eight dollars.   They had more expensive wooden models; but the cheaper one would allow me to find out if they work.  

 

I am very pleased with the results of the slicer.  I may, in the future, purchase a more substantial wooden guide

 

We make white bread, wheat bread, artisan breads, pizza dough, cinnamon raison bread, oat and brand breads.   There are also recipes for sourdough breads, but we don’t care for the taste.   The Cuisinart comes with a recipe book that is sufficient for any beginner bread maker.  We always make a one-and-a-half-pound loaf that fits well in a toaster.    The Cuisinart recipes have all produced good loafs.

 

There is a learning curve in making bread in a bread machine, and the only way to consistently turn out good bread is to use it enough to be able to determine a good dough consistency at the beginning of the cycle.  

 

A man I knew in rural Newfoundland, whose wife always made their bread, use to call bought bread “baker’s fog”.   Once you get use to home baked bread you will  understand his prejudice.    

 

During this time of pandemic isolation, why not become a bread maker?

the Ol’Buzzard