This week's bread

Last night/this morning I made wheat bread. I love love love waking up to the smells of baking bread at 5 am! This recipe also comes form the Bread Machine Cookbook. I also recommend NOT using the whole wheat setting if your machine has one, as this gives a longer rise time, and if you're me, you end up with a giant loaf that almost escapes the bread maker!

1 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1 egg (optional--I used it)
2 Tbs sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 cup bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 tsp yeast

This is nice and light and really good. I ended with a loaf with a giant muffin top that I had to cut off to store the bread. I'll probably cut this up and use it at dinners.

This week's bread

Since it is winter, there is not much to talk about, but I also feel I need to keep posting to keep the ball rolling on this blog. I have a few things I DO want to discuss in greater detail, but I need time to really write those up. So, instead what I though I would do is share a bread recipe each week.

I make bread every week, usually on Monday. I have a bread machine and I love it, so these are all bread machine recipes. I try to make a different bread each week because I like variety. Most of my recipes come from a 1991 cook book called The Bread Machine Cookbook by Donna Rathmell German. That is where this one comes from. It is for Rye Bread:

Medium Loaf--put ingredients in order into your bread machine, or use order specified by manufacturer.

1 cup 2 Tbs water
1 Tbs Vegetable oil
1 1/2 Tbs Honey
3/4 tsp salt
2 tsp caraway seeds
1 cup Rye flour
1 3/4 cup bread flour
3 Tbs nonfat dry milk
1 1/2 tsp yeast

This is supposed to be a New York style rye. Its close but not really quite there. I think it might be different if I rolled this out at the end of the dough cycle and made a real loaf out of it, but I'm not sure--the texture is not quite right for "real" rye bread to me.

Anyway. Enjoy.