Today, for the first time in my life, I made and baked a loaf of bread*. And very good it was too, even if I say so myself.
* Actually, what I did was to measure out some ingredients and put them in our shiny new bread maker. I then switched it on. Five hours later I went back and there was a loaf there. This is exactly the style of bread making that I can cope with.
Hmm. It seems that I’m not being notified when a comment is posted here. Why? Must check my spam control settings.
Just testing…
Nope – still seems to be broken. Bum.
Trying again…
Well, it’s nothing to do with WordPress, but the breadmaker…
Did you use the recipie suggestions that came with the machine?
I found those that came with mine were a little lame, but a little playing about gives a really nice loaf…
So far, I’ve used two recipes from the booklet that came with the machine – a granary loaf that was pretty good and an olive loaf that was excellent. I think that the granary loaf may have been a bit heavier than it should have been because I was not sufficiently accurate in measuring the water – I was more careful with the olive bread.
There are loads of recipes that we want to try, but I can see that there is plenty of scope to tweak them and come up with some interesting variations.
You can bake fruit bread in a breadmaker, though I don’t have a recipie for it.
The smell of fruit bread baking is probably much better that the finished taste
I’ve got a couple of recipes for fruit-based things – a fruit loaf and a fruity cake. Not tried either.
SPICY FRUIT LOAF:
1 tsp yeast
500g strong white flour
1 tbsp sugar
25g butter
1.5 tbsp milk powder
1.5 tsp salt
350ml water
2.5 tsp cinnamon
100g mixed dried fruit
Mix the fruit and cinnamon and put in the raisin dispenser (assuming you have one) and do on the 4hr setting.
FRUITY CAKE:
350g mixed dried fruit
50g chopped dates
50g walnuts
100g chopped glace cherries
300ml water
75g butter
3 medium eggs – beaten
250g plain flour
5ml bicarbonate of soda
1 – put fruit, dates, walnuts, cherries, water and butter in a pan. Heat until fat melted and liquid is hot.
2 – allow to cool sloghtly. add eggs, flour and soda. Mix.
3 – line the bread maker pan (minus kneading blade) with baking parchment and put the mixture in.
4 – select BAKE ONLY for 55 mins.
5 – after cooking, test with a skewer. If sticky, bake for another 5 minutes. If still slightly sticky, it will cook whilst standing.
6 – remove the pan from the machine. Leave in the pan for 5-10 mins before removing.
yum, will give it a try!