Hi! It’s late and I wanted to stop and sit a moment to reflect on my plans for tomorrow.  It is time to bake another loaf of bread.  I will use my trusty bread machine to do this.  The question is always what kind shall I make this time?

I have written out a couple of my favorite recipes on some notebook paper tear sheets.  They are pretty basic and that way I can write the changes I make in them out to the side so that I can tweak them to give me just the kind, size and texture loaf of bread I want, eventually.

Bill, my late husband, was really good at using this machine before he fell ill.  We started using it because I am allergic to soy and like bread.  Just about all of the store-bought bread is loaded with soy flour.  Then there is the margarine which is just about all made with soy oil or soy lecithin so that the simple joy of a piece of bread and margarine was lost to me more than once every second or third day.  I can have a little soy, but too much and I become a grouchy, ouchy, itchy, bloated mess —– not at all what Bill wanted in his wife!

After he fell and was bed bound for so long, and with the added burden of Mama’s health problems, I got away from baking my bread in the machine.  There wasn’t time.

This year, however, I decided to use it again, to learn how to make good bread so that I could enjoy it  instead of being limited to the five pieces of sandwich bread I get from Meals-on-wheels each week.  Good as they are, they are still little thin square pieces of soy flour, wheat flour and air, rather tasteless with no body.  They always remind me of the old Wonderbread commercials of the 1960′s even though they are not always white bread.

Finding a couple of brands of spreadable butter has also been an inspiration.  I use it instead of the soy oil margarine whenever I can afford it. That is most of the time if I am careful not to go overboard with it.  Such a spread deserves a good, taste-filled hearty bread to go with it.

I enjoy the creativity of making different kinds and flavors of bread.  I used to enjoy kneading bread dough as well.  With three cats in the house, though, I let the machine do the kneading.  Otherwise cat hair is likely to be an unwanted ingredient in my bread. Yuk!

My favorite kinds of bread in the machine, so far, are a light wheat, anadama bread and a swedish rye with carraway seeds and orange zest.  Anadama bread is made with bread flour, a bit of yellow cornmeal and molasses.  It is a dark bread, bordering on pumpernickel in color but with an ineresting rather nutty flavor from the molasses and corn meal.

I think that is what I will make tomorrow.  It has been a few weeks since I made any.  The last loaf went to some friends who stopped by just as I finished the loaf.  It takes about four hours in this machine.  Most os the time I just listen for any problems.  Once I have got the balance between water and flour just right I can close the lid and walk away until it is time to take the loaf out.  The pan will even keep it warm for me for a few hours if I should happen to make the bread late at night and go to bed after making sure that the kneading ball is smooth, round and not making sucking sounds against the bottom of the pan as it twirls and turns bouncing against the sides of the pan.

Last week I opened a new jar of bread machine yeast.  I found out the hard way with the previous jar, that leaving it in the car on a hot day is not a good idea.  If the vehicle, thus the yeast, get too hot, as in over 110 degrees farenheit, the yeast looses its ability to rise.  Then the bread also doesn’t rise much at all.  Oh, it still tastes great, but is very, very heavy and about half the height it should be in the pan when finished.  OOPS! I won’t soon make that mistake again.

After opening I keep my yeast in the refrigerator and take out my two teaspoons to warm to room temperature a little while before I start my loaf. That way it works well without having to proof it.  Proofing the yeast is a good idea, but it is an extra step and the water used can sometimes throw off the moisture balance of the loaf.

I have learned a lot in making my own bread over the past several months.  Most important, I have learned to use very little salt. My machine seems to work better when I use a half teaspoon or less. I also have found that a pinch more sweetener usually won’t hurt the bread and too dry a mixture is just as bad as too moist.  The extra five or ten minute it takes to stay close by and monitor the bread for proper moisture as it kneads is well worth the effort to get a perfect, high, soft but fine grained loaf of bread.

There is nothing to compare to it, nice and warm from baking.  Spread with a bit of the new spreadable, soft butter and enjoyed with a cup of coffee, that first slice from a new loaf is nirvana. Well, sex is better, but not much and I have no partner right now. That means it has to be fresh, warm, home-baked bread for me.

I’ll let you know how the loaf turned out and just which kind I did end up making.  Right now, however, my cup is empty and it is time for bed.  Next time I’ll share what I learned about ensuring success with the bread machine, even when you are just baking for one person.  Peace ——Ellen