Bread has received a bit of a bad rap during recent years because of the popularity of carbohydrates-are-evil fad diets. But bread, especially wholegrain, wholemeal, and malted loaves, is beneficial to your health, especially when you make your own instead of buying the processed variety at the supermarket. (Did you know that some store-bought bread has high-fructose corn syrup in it? Yech.) Homemade bread only has four or five ingredients. And the smell of baking bread is unbelievably comforting and evocative; nothing beats buttering a hot, fluffy homemade bread roll.
Bread can be made by hand, but bread makers require much less work on your part and a variety of loaf sizes can be produced by bread makers. It’s important to know that it’s not necessary to bake your bread in the bread maker. Most people use them to do the harder work of preparing the dough. Bread makers have different cycles for different types of bread, as the raising or kneading time varies among different recipes. Some bread makers even have a preheat cycle to warm the ingredients, since it is best that the ingredients are room temperature for the bread to raise properly.
To mix the flour, yeast, and water together by hand, you can use a Kitchenaid mixer. If using a bread maker, following the measurements of your recipe, pour the water into the bread pan and add in flour, sugar, salt, butter, and yeast. Then put the machine on the dough setting and a bit over an hour later, you will have lovely dough that is easy to work with. Then it can be baked in different ways .
To store, wrap the loaf in a paper or plastic bag, then set inside of a bread box and close tightly. If you’d like to enjoy your bread hot again, heat it in an LG microwave or in the oven.
