Homemade Bread

I confess! There has been a great lack of fresh photography on this blog lately... I give my deepest apologies and assure you that it will change just as soon as my camera batteries are charged.

In the meantime, I'd like to discuss something with you.

Homemade bread.

Few things smell or taste as good as homemade bread.

This week, I found our bread machine tucked away in the laundry room in Bowling Green. Naturally, I pulled it out and conducted a search for the accompanying recipe book.

We searched high and low.

Thankfully, it was low (under a bench in the back hallway) and we didn't have to move into sideways searching (complicated).

A few grocery purchases later, I was prepared with whole wheat flour, brown sugar, water, butter, salt and bread machine yeast. You add the ingredients to the bread machine in the order listed in the recipe book, pick the right "bread number" for what you're cooking, then press start. Four hours and twenty minutes later, you have a loaf of fresh bread.

We bought the machine from a friend who no longer wanted it. She sold it to us for $25, which is a steal for the simplicity and amount of bread the thing produces.

The wonderful part about a bread machine is its simplicity. There is none of that complicated business of kneading, covering, rising, kneading again, covering again, rising again, etc. The bread machine does all of it for you. Perhaps this is cheating. Perhaps it does not taste as good as bread done by hand might. Perhaps. But when I read recipes for real bread, I get winded. Just the idea of all that work for one loaf of carbohydrates... Wears me out.

For now, I'll just enjoy the fantastic, delicious, wonderful Raisin-Walnut Whole Wheat bread I just pulled out of the machine... It's warm and tastes fantastic with butter.

(Pretend there's a picture of delicious toasted bread with butter here).

Now, who wants to come over and eat some?