Tuesday, December 22, 2009

First Attempt At Bread Making

Remember the post about us getting a good deal on a bread machine during the Black Friday Sale? Well yeah, we have been wanting to get one for the longest time. Not only can we now make breads with that, but we can use it to make buns, pastries, pasta, pizza dough...even jams! We couldn't wait to try out our new 'toy', so we immediately went out to get the ingredients and tried making our first loaf of bread that very night.
Since it's the first time either of us have tried making bread, we didn't have any good recipes to try out. So, we just tried the first recipe we saw in the tiny recipe book that came with the bread machine. It was for a 2lbs loaf of basic traditional white bread. It looked pretty easy, so here goes! Start off by pouring in 1 + 3/8 cups of warm water into the bread pan.
Then, add 2 tablespoons of butter that is at room temperature.
Next, measure out 4 cups of bread flour and add that into the bread pan.
After that, add in 2 tablespoons of sugar.
Once you have added the sugar, measure 2 tablespoons of dry milk and add that to the bread pan.
Lastly, add in 1+ 3/4 teaspoons of salt.
Now, use your finger and form a well in the middle of the flour.
Then, measure in 2 +1/4 teaspoons of yeast.
Now, we are ready to start the bread making process. Carefully snap on the bread pan into the bread maker.
Set the machine to 'basic' setting and the crust color to 'medium'. Make sure the timer is showing 3:00 hours and then, press 'START'. Now, just sit back and relax for 3 hours :P
This is how it looked like after 3 hours! The bread did rise but it didn't seem to rise enough for me.
Here it is. The first loaf of bread that we made on the bread machine. It wasn't really the greatest...it was kind of dense and had a rough texture. After trying out a few pieces, we decided to throw the whole loaf away...hehe. Over a space of a few weeks, we experimented on at least 6 different recipes and at last, we found the perfect one that made light and fluffy bread! I will share with you that recipe in the coming days!! :D

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