I was given a bread maker years ago as a "moving away" gift. I hate to say it, but like our crock pot, it just sat in our closet, collecting dust. When we moved to North Carolina, I had all the intentions of using it, but after trying to give it a whirl, I realized that the kneading blade was missing. Only the most important part of the bread maker! It's funny how that big honkin' thing can completely fail without a 1 inch long piece of metal.
Because we are moving and cleaning out the apartment (thank you Craigslist!), Charlie and I decided that it was either time to use it or sell it. So, we looked up buying a new blade online, but they were about $15 plus shipping: kind of expensive for a fleeting "lets try this out" idea. Then there was amazon. I love amazon. I would marry it if I could marry a website. We found a bread kneading blade for just $3.95. Plus, using our giftcard from credit card points, along with some other purchases of things I needed, it was totally free shipping. Can't beat that.
Let's go bread!
I read the directions carefully and realized that messing up the bread maker is actually pretty easy to do. I should say, screwing up your bread is pretty easy to do. There were 2 full pages of "troubleshooting" and dos and don'ts. Sheesh! I had wanted to try a gluten free loaf, but knowing how testy that dough is, I decided to do a dry run with actual flour in case I totally screwed up.
Here's what I used:
Oil, bread maker white flour, yeast, salt, and sugar. Pretty simple! The booklet said the key was measuring everything correctly and using fresh ingredients. We had everything in house except the yeast and bread maker flour. It's a pretty cheap baking project.
And here is my 1.5 lb. loaf of bread after 58 minutes of baking goodness! Looks legit, right???
That looks so good! I might need to do the same exact thing since it's snowing here in CO!
ReplyDeleteAw, way to go! There's been some serious fear mongering through the rumor mill out her due to all the flooding (they're having to ship food north on barges and have it trucked down) and, even though the store is being stocked as normal, the shelves are consistently bare as people buy 5 times as much bread, meat, eggs and milk as usual. I have seriously considered buying a bread machine and, after seeing how well you've done, I think I might!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh...I saw a video about that today! Stay on high, dry ground. :) You totally should get a bread maker. We made another loaf today because we are STILL snowed in (or I should say "iced in"). Well worth the investment!
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