Adventures in Bread Making

Many years ago, when I was newly married, without a job and before kids, I got a bread machine to go with our country life. I bought a recipe book called Bread Machine Magic and worked my way through it, experimenting, changing up, making notes. I ordered all my flour by mail from a company called King Arthur Flour. Our house smelled deliciously of yeast.

And then along came the children. Grocery stores began to sell fresh whole grain breads. I put the bread machine away. When we moved from our forty acres to our not-quite-an-acre subdivision lot, I stashed the bread machine in the back of the pantry where it sat and sat and sat, until ---

last month, when I pulled it out, dusted it off, plugged it up. I found the Bread Machine Magic recipe book, too, and off I went, re-discovering my former self and recreating my current self as I again used King Arthur Flour, now available at Walmart, thank you very much, and began working my way again through the recipes.

honey wheat loaf, fresh from the machine

This morning our house smells deliciously of yeast.

There's a quote I like: It's never too late to become what you might of been. - oft attributed to George Eliot. My return to bread making makes me want to revise it: It's never to late to return to who you are.

My favorite recipe of late: Parmesan pine nut bread. In the margins of the recipe, I wrote, "light and fluffy. great all by itself." (One of the most fun things about this whole thing has been reading all my little notes in the margins of the recipes!)

And finally, a regret: while I kept the bread machine all those years, I got rid of this really cool bread board cutter contraption. I can't slice bread in uniform sizes to save my life! Guess I'm going to have to get me another one... or maybe just enjoy the variety? Maybe both!

Meanwhile, I've got to go feed my sourdough starter. xo