Breadmaking 101: F

The bread maker

My mother, Mary Ryan, never considered herself an expert in the kitchen but she was a good cook and very competent baker. She followed recipe instructions to the letter and knew the value of accurate measurements, especially for certain ingredients like baking powder, salt and vanilla.

I remember Maman's baked goods, produced with predictable results and few, if any, failures. Many years ago during a visit, she was horrified to see me throw out a baking sheet caked with some baking disaster that I was too lazy to clean up. She would have laughed at my recent bread making adventures.

I'd been thinking about getting a bread maker for several years, sure that the methodology would be foolproof and even enjoyable. I imagined myself throwing together a batch of bread before leaving for work in the morning and arriving home to the tantalizing aroma of fresh baked bread. Add soup and voilà, a delicious meal.

As I researched the subject over a period of at least 7-8 years, I decided that the best approach might be to borrow a bread maker from a friend. However, anyone I asked had long ago sold the machine at a garage sale or donated it to charity. Finally, Meggan K. came to the rescue with an almost new machine that she graciously borrowed to me.

I made my first bread last Wednesday, a one-pound loaf of plain white bread. The instructions were easy and soon my bread was being mixed and kneaded, allowed to rise several times, and baked in the machine. My husband and I sampled the bread as soon as we could, while it was still warm. We tried it cold too, and as toast. It tasked fine, but really "just OK". I ended up throwing out most of it, determined to try again.

This time I found a recipe online that went against the instructions that came with the bread maker -- "Forget everything you thought you knew about using your bread machine!". The recipe promised fabulous results, so I thought it would be good to come home from church to fresh baked bread. Early on in the process, something seemed to be amiss. The mixture didn't knead properly and a layer of flour covered the top of the "loaf". The yeast mixture bubbled up along the sides of the pan. Oh oh. This development did not bode well.

Home made bread!

I decided to let the cycle terminate naturally. The alert sounded after baking was complete, so I eagerly opened the bread maker.  The gooey mixture was caked with flour and the "bread" seemed like dumplings squashed together, with a bit of caulk added in for texture: another candidate for the garbage. Mercifully, Bob did not laugh, but thought that he himself would be able to do a better job if he tried. I can see this might very well be true.

This is not my first culinary catastrophe, and I must have matured a little over the years because I didn't have a temper tantrum or try to hide the evidence of my failure. It helps that retirement has given me more time, and I didn't need to feel that I had wasted precious weekend time on bread making.

I still have bread flour and yeast left.

I'm going to try making bread one more time, the traditional way.