bread recipes! bread recipes!

There are lots of books you can get about bread machine-based breadmaking. A lot of the better recipes will involve using the dough cycle and then cooking it in a traditional oven, though.

Last week I made a simple chocolate bread that was absolutely decadent (pace MST3K fans) when smeared with honey-roasted peanut butter and raspberry preserves.

Dough:
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/8 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour
2 tsp yeast

Filling:
Lots of cinnamon
Lots of sugar

Recipe:
Put all the dough ingredients in the machine in order listed. It helps if you cut the butter into little squares. Put on dough cycle. When finished, hand roll it so that it's kind of flat. Now take a little bowl, like what you'd put cereal in (not Friday-type what you put cereal in though) and fill that halfway with sugar and cinnamon, adjusting for how you like it best. Now spread that mixture all over the top of flattened dough. Now roll topped dough from one end to the other, like a jelly roll. Then bake in oven at 350F for 20- 25 minutes. You can make icing, if you like that, really quickly by just mixing some confectioner's sugar with whole milk (adjust sugar level to taste) and then drizzling on top but it's not necessary.

1lb flour, 1tsp caster sugar, pinch salt, 1 sachet (7g) easy-blend yeast , 10 fl oz tepid water, 2 oz butter, 1 285g jar sun-dried tomatoes (in oil). Drain the oil off the tomatoes and roughly chop up (I do it in food processor) and add to the dough mix after the first proving (or at the beep in a machine I spose), using a little extra oil if the dough is too dry.

I made bread a couple of times at home after that, but one or two measly little loaves for all that work seemed pretty sad. I kind of agree, though, that there's something to doing the process from scratch. Kneading and pounding dough is so tactile. Bread machines are definitely a boon though. I haven't tried one myself, but now when I visit my mom, the smell of fresh-baked bread meets me at the door.

What I wonder about with those bread machines, though, is does the bread always turn out the same? Cuz yeast is a very sensitive fellow -- we used to adjust our recipes slightly depending on the weather. Sometimes you had to add a little extra flour or a little extra sweetness.

Yeast kind of intrigues me. What is it? An animal? A plant? Just an organism?

Dude I restarted this thread because I've just started making bread and it's DEAD EASY! Like chris, I thought it was too hard, or scientific or something. All this talk about "bread machines," as if a mere human stood no chance of creating anything worthwhile. But we don't NEED to be ultra-humang, we have ALIEN SPORES that do the work!! Honestly I made fucking gorgeous bread with about thirty minutes work TOTAL (plus rising and baking). I just don't understand what bread machines are for. People with tiny twigs for arms? I mean I just made the most basic of recipes. I bet there are other things to do. Use fresh yeast, for instance, instead of the fake quick-bake stuff. I could have let it rise a lot longer, I guess. But this is refinement! Twiddling! Now, I Love Everything - if you show me your twiddles I'll show you mine!!

I found that very white-flour, gluteny recipes benefited from more rising and punching down (but always being sensitive to what the consisitency was, not overworking it), whereas darker less gluteny doughs like Russian Black, couldn't take as much rising without losing the little elasticity they had.

Then there's sourdough. We had a culture that was years old. Sometimes we'd feed it a piece of orange. We refreshed it daily with water and more flour and kept it in the walk-in.

With my ultra-basic recipe I "punched it down" after it rose the first time.. but I couldn't resist pushing and pulling it some more, kneading it a little bit.. is this what you mean? Should you never knead it again after you've let it rise?

i too have never understood the idea of bread machines.

my mum makes like dozens of kinds of fantastic bread. i will get some ideas from her and post them here.

>Bread Ideas:
>
>olive and sage
>basil, parmesan and pine nut
>parmesan, black pepper, oregano
>bacon and rosemary
>walnut and poppy seed
>walnut and raisin ( fantastic with cheese!)
>parmesan and walnut (good for rolls)
>pesto
>sun-dried tomato,grated cheddar, herbes de Provence, pine nuts potato
>bread brown bread with oats, sunflower seeds and poppy seeds (good
>basic loaf)
>
>If you want details of quantities for any of the above let me know. Can
>also
>recommend stuffed foccaccia recipe from River Café Green.

she also sent me a recipe for her (fantastic) chocolate bread; it's a scan though so i'll have to see if i can find somewhere to host it.

http://www.ma.ic.ac.uk/~tsg/Chocbread.jpg

I've never made my own bread. :( Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery keeps tempting me to, tho': it's all history! and eighteenth-century recipes!

okay so I got another question wot I believe to be pursuant to our investigations. How do you get a nice CRISP on the crust?

http://www.supras.nl/images/Overheated.JPG

I'll look it up

Now I admit I still think this. Regardless, today, in the midst of my mania for cooking various things, I have made my first ever loaf o' bread:

http://static.flickr.com/96/225608318_6c4faf8b1b.jpg

I intentionally chose to make something simple, so this is nothing more than your basic flour/water/yeast/salt prep, though with some fresh parsley as well from my haul on Thursday. It's cooling right now so I'll have to see how good it is or not later!

I can however say that I did this without a food processor -- kneading all the way, doesn't take that long really! -- or a bread machine -- used a baking stone in my oven. Like making one's own homemade tomato sauce, there's a joy in this kind of prep work. :-)

It's organic, you see.

It looks like a murder weapon.

If it was Irish soda bread, probably.

I love to knead bread by hand - it goes from a sticky mess to smooth and lively in 10-15 minutes. I can recommend replacing part of the water with a bit of olive oil, especially for rustic loaves. The dough is really nice to handle and the oil adds flavor and texture to the bread. Casuistry taught me the yeasty flavor adding properties of the magical bread sponge. Mix up 1 cup flour, a tsp of yeast, 1 cup of water in your bread bowl and leave it in a cool place overnight (or for at least 4 hours), then use the resulting bubbly mass to make your bread.

I tried doing that but clearly didn't cut deep enough. Another time.