Domestic Science: The Bread Machine

Some of you may have seen my Facebook postings about baking the first loaf of bread in my new bread machine. I promised a blog post should the bread turn out to be a success. Based on the fact that you're reading this now, it's safe to say the machine didn't make an unpalatable bread brick. In fact, it was pretty amazing, and I'm happy to report that the bread machine will not be trashed anytime soon!

Now, the caveat: While the bread machine is "new" to me, it's not exactly out-of-the-box. One of Mitch's neighbors had an estate sale last week, and being the savvy estate sale goers that we are, we had to check it out. On my part, I immediately gravitated toward the kitchen, hoping to find a blender for the boys' house - their old blender met its maker during an ill-fated run-in with Dan and his less-than-perfect smoothie making skills.

Tip: glass blenders are not meant to be dropped on hardwood floors.

Unfortunately, a savvier estate sale goer beat me to the blender several hours prior, so I moved my sights to extra baking supplies. I quickly found a muffin/cupcake tin and snatched it up. Next, several holiday-themed cookie cutters. These are things I'll keep at the boys' house, as all baked goods that I prepare generally come out of the oven and almost immediately into their mouths. Finally, as I was ready to pay, I noticed a bread machine sitting precariously on the check-out table. It was marked $5. Good as mine. I walked out of that house having spent $5.50 - not too shabby!

Several days elapsed, and I decided it was time to see what that bread machine could do. After a grocery trip to assemble all of my ingredients, I stared nervously at the thick instruction manual. After reading up a bit, I picked an easy Challah recipe - it's a white bread traditionally baked by Jews for Sabbath, so said the manual. Because the bread requires a special braiding technique before baking, I had to create my own baking program for the machine.

Now, many of you know that I was a Biological Sciences major in my undergrad years, and did research for several big-whig professors that focused on cloning primer techniques. Don't ask me to explain all the science behind any of that work - Law School has long since pushed all that scientific knowledge out of my brain. One thing that didn't leave my head, however, was the insanity monotony sheer hell of programming the PCR machines. Heating to 98 degrees for 1 minute, decreasing to 88 degrees for 15 seconds, increasing to 102 degree for 30 seconds...cycle over and over 60 times. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Programming a bread machine is not too unlike this. Lots of button pushing, beeping, and repeated swearing.

After that personal hell, I mixed the ingredients, taking care that the yeast didn't touch any of the wet ingredients on the bottom of the pan. If the yeast mixes with the wet ingredients before its supposed to...the machine will explode. Just kidding! Seriously though, early yeast activation should be avoided if you want yummy bread!

After the bread machine went through the punch cycle, I took the dough out and braided it. Once braided, I returned the loaf to the pan so it could rise.

At some magical point, the machine kicks into high gear and starts baking the bread...and behold! It looks so pretty, doesn't it?

When I took the bread out of the pan, it was steaming, hot, aromatic, and...HUGE! This is what 2lbs of dough creates in the bread machine. In the future, I will probably take the dough out of the machine before baking begins, and make two separate loaves in the oven. That's the great thing about bread machines...they bake the bread if you want, but they can be used solely for preparing the dough also! Neat-o!

After we sliced the loaf, and had several celebratory buttered (and peanut buttered) pieces, the rest of it went into a bag to stay fresh. What's wonderful about homemade bread is that you know exactly what is going into it- no preservatives or unnecessary chemicals. The caveat with that though, is that a loaf of fresh bread will only stay "fresh" for several days. But with five of us in the house, going through 2lbs of bread in a week is not difficult to accomplish!

I cannot wait to amass more recipes and try out some of the different functions on the bread machine- including a "Jam" setting! Fresh jam, Oh Em Gee! Stay tuned for more developments :)

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