Saturday, January 23, 2021

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 

 

 


6 comments:

  1. I've not dragged my bread maker out in years. You've got me thinking I should. That's a handy little slicing unit, too. -Jenn

    ReplyDelete
  2. That bread slicing guide is brilliant! I've never bought a bread maker because it would encourage me to eat much more bread than I do, which would not be good for me. But I know those machines make beautiful loaves!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I would love some homemade bread. I had a bread machine years ago and always made yeast dough for rolls. I made loaf bread a couple times. Not sure what ever happened to that thing. Now you got me thinking.
    Lisa

    ReplyDelete
  4. The S.O. does great sourdough from scratch. His starter is more well-traveled than most people. I like working with yeast. We've never owned a bread machine.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I may need to give our Cuisinart bread maker more chances. So far I haven't been so impressed - flour not completely mixed, whack recipes. It seems like if you need to get in there with a spatula to make sure it's fully mixed and pull the paddles before baking, it's easier just to do all by hand. And a warning - make sure the recipes make sense. I've found at least one that calls for the same amount of water(?) for all loaf sizes. Ours is about 5-6 years old, so maybe they've fixed some of those issues??

    That's an interesting loaf slicer tool. I have a bread knife that has an adjustable bar on it.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I need one of them...will buy one this week..cause I have the urge to bake some bread..thanks for this

    ReplyDelete

COMMENT: Ben Franklin said, "I imagine a man must have a good deal of vanity who believes, and a good deal of boldness who affirms, that all doctrines he holds are true, and all he rejects are false."