Bread Machine Recipes

I've had a bread machine for many years, although I made bread by hand for many more years before that. And, having made bread manually, I have to say that my bread machine is one of my favorite kitchen tools! I know exactly how much time it saves me! I do get better results for knowing how the bread should feel, and I adjust by adding teaspoons of water or tablespoons of flour when I check on it after about 5 minutes of machine mixing. Great results all the time! (I usually pull out the paddle after the last kneading cycle so that it doesn't tear up my loaf.)

After the initial excitement, I find that I pretty much make only two base recipes in my automatic bread machine (ABM). Although my bread machine makes both 1.5 and 2 pound loaves, my 1.5 loaves usually rise high enough that I'm not sure I should make the 2 pound size. So these are scaled to 1.5 pound recipes!

Plain Bread

1 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 1/8 cup warm water

3 cups flour

1 tsp yeast

My usual variation on this recipe is 2 cups of bread flour and 1 cup whole grain whole wheat flour, but I'll vary it up. If I use less than 1.5 cups of a high-protein flour like bread flour, I add wheat gluten to make sure it holds together like bread instead of cake! If I add raisins at the beep, it becomes raisin bread! When I do that, I often use sweetened water, like water that I've used to rinse out that last little bit of honey.

Fancy Bread

1 Tbs canola oil

1 tsp salt

3/4 cup warm liquid (like water)

1/2 cup warm sauce (like applesauce)

3 cups flour

1/3 cup rolled oats

1 tsp yeast

My usual variation on this recipe is, of course, applesauce bread as noted. When I make applesauce bread, I tend to add cinnamon and often something sweet (2 Tbs honey or molasses). This would also be a good base for raisin bread too. But I've been "free form" and used thinned barbeque sauce for the liquid and leftover guacamole for the sauce. As long as the combination of liquid and sauce adds up to 1 1/4 cups, I've had good results baking with whatever needs to be used up!

Yum yum!