I’ve always wanted a bread maker. Even before the current events had happened, I was talking with a friend about how much I wanted one, but that the features in the ones widely available were incredibly confusing to me.

Before this month, any bread I made was with packet yeast and a loaf pan in the oven. Manual kneading (sooo fun, but sooo time consuming), and lots of babysitting. I hated buying store bread – not because I had any qualms about it tasting bad or having odd ingredients (we try to be careful, but I also try not to have too much anxiety over our food choices), but because my Dutch husband always said that when we were in Holland he could walk down the street and buy fresh out of the oven bread, and here we didn’t have any local bakeries (AND live a minimum 20 minute drive from civilization).

So, the more time I spent making bread fully by hand the more the sandwich bread became a mini-obsession. I WANTED to offer this to my husband and family, as if to say, “He he, tell me THIS isn’t fresh.” Plus, I do really like the idea of knowing what I put in my own bread, instead of hoping the ingredient list isn’t too long and I don’t miss some obscure article online about how such and such is really terrible for you, and no one knows it, but it is in our store bread (ahem, preservatives…ahem).

Anywho, I took a leap of faith last month and bought a Cuisinart Convection Breadmaker. I liked the idea of a Convection bread maker, because I had a major distrust of convection baking until very recently (as in, I completely refused to use the feature since getting my first convection equipped oven 5 years ago), and now I’m a solid convert. I still use regular bake and roast sometimes, but the balanced and faster cooking I get with convection is game changing.

The one I purchased is out of stock (isn’t everything these days?!), but if I see it online again I will post the link. For the most part, I would think that most breadmakers would do this recipe similarly.

So, I started with the basic bread recipe from the Cuisinart manual. I don’t know WHAT I did wrong, but I only had 1 good loaf from 4, and every time it would fall right during the last rise. Tears were shed. In retrospect, I think that I’m used to having warmer water due to making bread by hand, and I might have misread my liquid thermometer on the warm side.

That being said, it was difficult for me to use the manual’s recipe anyway, because it called for dehydrated milk and, while I have regular milk on hand most of the time, I rarely have dehydrated, and I didn’t feel like keeping a special stock. Again… I’m all for making my life EASY, and I try not to keep special ingredients on hand just ‘cuz.

I finally found this recipe from King Arthur Flour. The name says it all, but before you go running off to make this recipe, I’ll go through how I whiz through it with a few tweaks every morning. I always go for the larger loaf size recipe.

The first time I made this recipe, I heard my poor machine go clunk clunk clunk all the way through the kneading cycle. The bread came out great, but STIFF. Way too much flour for me.

I added 1/3 of a cup of milk, and have made two loaves since, both of which have the perfect blend of ease, firmness for sandwiches, and airiness for yum factor.

I also like that it calls for all-purpose flour, instead of bread flour, which is also something I have to special order (which I usually try to keep on hand, except when corona decides to hose up my routines…thanks for THAT). I always have way more all-purpose flour anyway, so the fact that I could use it for this recipe was great.

My current operating theory is that I was putting my liquid in too warm, because of the reasons mentioned before, and I also don’t have time to wait for my butter to get to room temperature (do I have a patience-problem? Uh, maybe), so I came up with the following method to make this recipe.

1. I measure all of my ingredients out FIRST. I use a measuring cup, and put both liquids (lukewarm water + cold milk) into the same cup. I do not heat it up until I am ready to start the maker. Temperature is sooo important (and is a total pill to get right). Picture below. In this picture, the butter and liquids are still cold. We will fix it in a minute. The yeast is, as well, because I have a bottle of yeast and you have to keep it refrigerated, but it doesn’t seem to hurt the recipe.

2. I heat the liquids for 10 seconds in the microwave and take the temp with my kitchen thermometer (after stirring to eliminate hot patches). If you are the patient type, and want to put the butter and liquid out on the counter to warm, I applaud you. I’m not that patient. I have farm stuff to do, and chickens don’t care why their breakfast is late.

The key with my breadmaker is to use LUKEWARM liquids. Instead of 110 degrees or so, like I use when hand baking, I shoot for 80-90 degrees F. I am thinking since the maker stays so warm it works better this way. I pour my ingredients in in this order (per manufacturer guidelines): liquid, butter – 1/4 of the amount called for in each corner (also warmed for a few seconds, but not too many – 5 maybe – you don’t want it softened at all, just not freezing), flour, sugar and salt (they are both in the smaller middle bowl), and then I make a little hole in the middle, and plunk in the yeast. I tried to get a good picture below, but my kitchen lighting makes it hard not to catch a shadow. See the pretty little yeast nest?

3. I put the maker on white loaf – 1.5 lb – medium crust. Turn off the mix-ins option, hit start and walk away (as much as I like to bake, this makes me feel like I’m cheating a bit, but it is AWESOME). If I am around, I will listen for the pause beep halfway through and take out the paddle so the loaf only has a tiny hole, but quite honestly, again… doesn’t bother me. Bread is bread and bread is yum.

Once it is finished, I will empty it onto a plate to cool. USE OVEN MITTS (or, if you have a retriever that loves to chew oven mitts for some reason completely unbeknownst to me, use a thick kitchen towel). Below is your (hopeful) final result.

PS – If you have trouble, I do know things like humidity can mess with our bread. Post your problem below, and I will Google the heck out of it to try to help, if I don’t know. 🙂

PPS – Working on my first sourdough starter. Will update you on how that goes soon. May not be the next post, but will be pretty quickly behind it if not!

Hope y’all have fun, and let me know how it goes! If you find some yeast for sale online, let me know! I’m on the hunt!