My brother-in-law gave me his old bread machine, along with a recipe book by Beth Hensperger. This worked great until we broke the bread machine. I still used the recipes in the Hensperger book, figuring that if they worked jumbled in a machine, they'd also work mixed up in a bowl and baked in the oven.
Years later, I finally bought a new bread machine. I used the Hensperger book again.
I still use it, but my two standby bread machine recipes are on the King Arthur Flour Website:
The whole wheat recipe calls for optional flax seed or similar, so it's worth buying some flax seed.
I've used acorn flour instead of the flax seed and it tasted really good.*
I've recently added a tablespoon of flax seed to two of the white bread recipes in Hensperger; it did no harm, and gave the bread a friendly speckle.
The English Muffin bread uses all-purpose flour, so it might be a good first recipe for you, if you haven't gotten around to buying bread flour. It's called English Muffin bread, but you can just call it bread. You can add raisins to this one if you'd like. It also works well with the cinnamon swirl feature shown in the Cuisinart Bread Machine video:
Take out the dough at the "Remove the Paddle" beep, stretch it out, sprinkle on sugar and cinnamon (and raisins) then roll it back up and put it into the machine to bake.
Suggested purchases:
- Bread Flour
- Bread Machine (Instant) Yeast: because the King Arthur bread machine recipes calls for it. If you can only find the regular Active Dry Yeast, that will be fine, don't worry. The non-instant yeast is probably better for the long Artisan bread cycle, but that's just my guess.
- Nonfat Dry Milk powder: Sometimes the bread recipe calls for this. Sometimes the bread recipe calls for milk, but either you don't want to use up your milk, or you want to use the delay timer. You can use the delay timer when a recipe calls for milk if you leave the milk powder on top of the flour in the machine. It doesn't become milk until the machine turns on and begins mixing.
- Buttermilk Powder: Hensperger sometimes calls for buttermilk powder, sometimes actual buttermilk. Either way, you can use the powder (and the delay timer). The Saco Buttermilk powder also has a great pancake recipe on the back, so you should buy it even if you don't have a bread machine.
- Flax Seed
- Gluten, sometimes called Gluten Flour
Gluten and flax seed can be tricky to find at first. Try carefully scanning the large display of something-Mills** specialty grains in the middle of the baking aisle. Other groceries stock them with the "natural" foods baking ingredients.
If you only have All-Purpose Flour but want to bake a recipe that calls for Bread Flour, just add a tablespoon or two of Gluten. Not a perfect substitute, but it works OK.
More advice:
Never put the salt in with the liquid at the bottom of the bread machine, especially with the delay timer. It kills the yeast too fast and the bread doesn't rise well.
With recipes calling for oil and honey or molasses, measure out the oil in the tablespoon first, then measure the honey or molasses with the oily tablespoon. The honey or molasses drips off the oiled tablespoon much better than off of a dry one. Remember that 1/4 cup is 4 tablespoons, so you don't have to get your quarter-cup measuring cup sticky.
*I don't know if anyone sells acorn flour. I made it from acorns after watching three Youtube videos. It took hours, with lots of water and energy expended in boiling, soaking, and baking, so probably not worth it, but the results were tasty.
** Bob's Red Mills, Hodgson Mills, or Arrowhead Mills, for example.
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