IT ALL COMES DOWN TO YOU

I love food and I love cooking. I am sucker for healthy foods and junk. Give me a good meal and I am happy for the rest of the day. Feed me a bad meal and I turn into the wicked witch of the west. I pretty much think of food all the time, including while I am eating a meal I am often thinking of the next one I will make.

I have been making my own bread for a while. Wherever I can get access to a Bread Machine as I don’t have the time or patience to sit there and kneed for half an hour.

I managed to pick my latest one up from eBay for $30 which isn’t too hard. Everyone seems to be getting rid of theirs (BARGAIN!)  Is it just a generic brand – one thing I have learnt about bread machines is you don’t need to go fancy. They all do the same job. The one I use has a 58 minute express bake too.

I spend about $6 on flour and yeast and that gets me 4 loaves or pizza dough. And the best thing about it all. 5 simple ingredients. Flour, yeast, olive oil, sugar and salt and you have soft white fluffy bread.

Make sure you get organic bread flour. It’s nice knowing that the flour is not sprayed with bad chemicals.

So want to know how I make it?

3 cups of Bread Flour

1 Cup of Warm water

1 satchet (2 1/4 teaspoons) of Instant Yeast*

1/4 cup of Olive Oil

1 tablespoon of Sugar

1 teaspoon of Salt

Add the water first, then sugar and then the bread flour plus the rest of the ingredients. Add the yeast last.

Turn the breadmaker on and also your oven. Choose express or normal white loaf. Let the breadmaker do it mixing and kneading. After about half an hour go and check the loaf.

It should be starting to rise. Take the pan out of the breadmaker, lift out the dough, remove the mixing flappy thing that sits at the bottom (to prevent a big hole in your bread) and place the dough back in.

And here is my little trick. DON’T PUT THE PAN BACK INTO THE BREADMAKER.

Then take the pan and put in your oven set at 350 F and bake for 25-30 minutes. Uncovered. It cooks your bread faster and more evenly than the breadmaker in my opinion. You can still use the breadmaker to finish it off but if you are hungry I recommend the oven.

Here is my latest creation which was eaten in half an hour by everyone. Buttered white fluffy bread yummmmmmmmm

*If you just have activated yeast instead of instant. Mix the yeast in the with water and make the water hot(not too hot though) and let it sit for 5-10 mins until it foams up. This activates it properly.