Search - The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook

I finally got into the craze last year – baking bread in a bread machine. One of my co-workers decided he wasn’t going to ever use his bread machine, so he gave it to me. For 2-3 months, my house smelled great! Then one thing after another, I stopped using it. Then I got The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook.

It starts off with having you get familiar with your machine – the cycles and settings. Then you get educated on the various ingredients, the process and what to do if something comes out wrong.

Then come the recipes – 300 of them.
Daily Breads – white breads, potato bread, english muffins, egg breads;
The Earth’s Bounty – whole wheat, whole-grain, and specialty flour breads;
Traditional Loaves – country breads and sourdough breads;
Breads made with the Produce of the Garden, Orchard & Creamery – herb, nut, seed and spice, vegetable and fruit, cheese breads;
Circles, Squares and Crescents – pizzas and other flatbreads;
Sweet Loaves – chocolate, fruit, and other sweet breads including sticky buns;
Express Lane Bread – no-yeast quick breads;
and finally a chapter on making Jams, Preserves, and Chutneys in your Bread Machine (requiring a jam cycle on your machine).

The recipes are easy to read in a brown print with the ingredients highlighted in a light green box off to the side. There’s a brief paragraph that describes the bread or where it came from. However, there’s no nutritional information, so if you’re watching carbs, calories, or whatever, you don’t know if you can have one slice or two. Most recipes are for the 1 ½-pound and 2-pound size loaves. Obviously, some of the recipes only use the machine to mix the dough and for the first rising. Then it’s taken out of the machine, formed into the appropriate shape, left to rise again and then baked in the oven.

Throughout the book are highlighted boxes with bread machine baker’s hints, baker’s glossaries, techniques, the right ingredient, and leftover bread cookery hints. I wish the boxes were in a chapter by themselves instead of interspersed throughout the book. They would be easier to find later. There’s also an appendix called Bits & Pieces tells of the uses of day-old bread for croutons, toasts and such. A 2nd appendix includes recipes on what to eat with your bread – flavored butters, cheeses, pates, and spreads.