If you ate bread machine bread growing up, you probably know that it can be dry, hard to cut with a thick crust, and a mess to make. Well it can be that way or it can be the most DELICIOUS bread you’ve ever eaten and take no time at all to do. Making bread is definitely more nutritious and MUCH, MUCH cheaper then buying the equivalent bread at a super market. If you don’t have a bread machine, check your local second hand store. I know mine had at least 4 today when I went. You can always do a Google search for instructions on a particular machine.

SAVE TIME: Make Bread Mixes! This is the same idea behind making a lot of sandwiches at once. If you make your own bread mixes and store them in the fridge, then it is one mess and takes about 1 minute to make a loaf of bread. Nice, right? (To make a bread mix, combine all dry ingredients from your favorite recipe (except for yeast) in a ziploc bag and store in the refrigerator)  

This is a whole loaf.

As you can see it is thinly sliced.

In fact it looks so good (and tastes so great with butter & honey) you could serve it at a brunch!

It also makes the most delicious sandwiches!

My tips for making DELICIOUS homemade bread in your bread machine.

1) Use white wheat (it’s taste is more subtle) and always use the wheat setting (whole wheat needs to rise longer than bleached white flour).

2) Add potato flakes to your bread machine recipe to add the soft texture of a store bought bread. I add 1/2 C. to mine. This is extra great since the cannery just started carrying potato flakes! (This trick has been used since the olden days when women would use the water used from cooking potatoes in their bread to make it soft. )

3) Allow bread to cool in a closed Ziploc bag (or towel) to make the crust soft. Somehow, and I’m not sure of the science behind it, the moisture goes back into the bread and makes the crust VERY soft. My bread doesn’t get moldie or dry out as quickly as before. A softer crust makes the bread much easier to cut. CAUTION: I was told me that before store bought bread a crunchy crust was the way to tell the bread was fresh…so I guess if you like the fresh crunch to your bread continue to air cool.

4) Experiment with Gluten. I add 1 T. of gluten to my bread. Gluten makes the bubbles in your bread strong so that your bread doesn’t sink from the bubbles popping too early.

5) High Altitude dwellers should cut down the amount of yeast called for in the recipe because bread rises faster in high altitude areas and since the bread machine is a timed process it doesn’t know to bake when the dough has doubled in size. For reference, I halfed my yeast from what it called for in my recipe.

5) Make the process easy by filling Ziploc bags with all dry ingredients minus the yeast and placing in your fridge. This way you always have fresh homemade bread ready and waiting to begin for you with no mess!

Just as a side note, I’ve tried using other people’s very delicious whole wheat bread machine recipes in my bread maker and they never turn out (because of the high altitude problem) so don’t be discouraged if this happens to you! Just try to make your bread machine’s recipe to how you like it.

For more tips and tricks for using food storage in your everyday recipes, please visit www.everydayfoodstorage.NET