My Bread Maker

For years and years I was a purist. I believed in making my bread the old fashioned way, either kneading it by hand or using the Kitchenaid John bought for my birthday when we were dating. Bread maker's were only for people who didn't know how to make bread and to be honest, I looked down on them.
Several years ago I began making my own honey whole wheat bread in order to feed my kid's healthy bread, and it was so delicious. In fact my boys don't remember me ever buying store bought on a regular basis. To them it is unnatural for people to buy bread. On more than one occasion recently I've overheard my boys asking women why they don't make their own bread.
I love making my own bread but the biggest problem I encountered was my oven heating up my house in the summer, so in the warmer months we frequently were without bread or I'd grab a loaf from the store to get us by until I made more. Well, I'd had enough of that so I swallowed my pride and decided to grab a cheap bread machine from the DI just to see if I even liked the idea of a bread machine. While I didn't care much for the used bread maker I bought- because the loaves were oddly shaped and the crust was thick and tough, I decided it was so nice to throw in the ingredients, push a button or two, and have a steaming loaf of bread in a few short hours. I did my research and found the cadillac of bread machines. The Zojirushi. It was pricey but I don't cut corners in my kitchen conveniences and knew it would be well worth the cost. I was so right! It not only makes regular bread shaped loaves, it has a homemade setting where I custom set it to preheat, mix, rise, mix, rise, beat down rise and bake to where I believe I have the perfect loaf. It took many tries to adapt a recipe to closely match my handmade bread, but after a lot of tweaking I finally came up with a recipe that was pretty close. I cannot adequately express how much I love my Zojirushi. It has saved me so much time making bread, it doesn't heat up my house when it's hot, and we never run out of bread. On the occasion we eat the last slice in the evening, I simply throw in the ingredient and set the time so we wake up to a steaming, wonderful smelling, loaf of bread. I truly believe there is nothing in the world better smelling than a fresh loaf of bread. Mmmmm. I'll put my own recipe at the bottom of post.

 

My Own Honey Whole Wheat
1 c. + roughly 3T warm water
just under 1/4 c. honey
2T. butter melted
1 heaping tsp. salt
1/4 c. ten-grain
1 1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1 1/4 c. bread or all-purpose flour.
1-2 tsp. wheat gluten if using all-purpose
1 1/2 tsp yeast-whatever I happen to have on hand