Monday, September 21, 2009

Do You Really Need Bread Machine Mixes?

By Marion Jones

Do you make use of bread machine mixes when you want to make yeast bread in your automatic bread-making machine? If so, why? Is it because you think it's easier? It is so simple to make gourmet bread quickly from simple bread recipes and so much more variable too. If you use bread machine mixes you are limited to the bread machine mixes you can find in the stores " no matter how many of them there are.

On the other hand, a good bread machine recipe book is infinitely more flexible than bread machine mixes. A good bread machine cookbook might give you 150 or so recipes originating from several countries, but it will also inspire you to adapt those recipes, encouraging you to be creative and invent your own style of bread.

Bread machine mixes are really quite limiting and you have no say about what the bread machine mix contains either: preservatives, colouring, MSG, salt or Heaven knows what. OK, it tells you on the label, but you cant remove them, if you only use bread machine mixes.

Making bread is really quite easy. Or to put it correctly, the ingredients to making bread are really quite simple. To bake a very basic loaf of bread, you only need: flour, water, yeast, sugar, salt and fat or oil. The hard part about making bread is the mixing. It can take five hours to mix the bread making ingredients together; to wait for it to rise; to knead it; wait for it to prove; knead it again and bake it.

But, if you have a bread making machine you can put the hard bread mixing, proving, kneading cycle on automatic and if you have a bread-making recipe book you will be funished with numerous recipes to guide and encourage you.

What could be easier? You look in the bread-making machine cookbook for an appetizing recipe; you put the everyday ingredients into the bread mixing bowl of the bread machine and you put the yeast into a time-release box on top of the bread machine; set the timer and go about your daily life or go to sleep!

The bread making machine will stir the ingredients and consult the timer. Our bread-making machine has a timer that can be set for sixteen-hours in advance. That means that, if you want your gourmet, yeast bread ready for, say, 7:30 AM, the bread-making machine will mix the flour, water, salt oil and sugar at once, then add the yeast at say, 5 AM, knead, prove and bake the bread and ring the alarm at 7:30 to let you know that your gourmet food is waiting for you.

Except that you won't need the bell to tell you that. The smell of freshly baked bread will [permeate|fill your house and you will be very much cognizant of the fact that your bread making machine is almost ready to deliver one of the best loaves of bread you've ever had in your life. And you will never look for bread machine mixes again. You'll be overflowing with your own bread machine mixes in no time at all and you'll be giving bread away as gifts so that you can try out your very own latest bread machine mix idea.

Bread machine mixes: why bother with them?

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