Pages

11/1/18

Perfect Homemade Bread - You can make it in your bread machine




Our family may eat primarily low carb and sugar free but I'm a carb lover when it comes to bread and pasta and sometimes, especially on chilly Fall days or cold winter nights I crave homemade breads.  It's that time of year when I start to make more homemade soups and stews, and what goes better than a slice of homemade bread? 

This one is my 'go to' recipe when I don't actually want to do any work to make the bread... I just want to eat it.  I've used this recipe for the 20 years that I've had my bread machine - although you'll see in my notes at the bottom that it's such a great recipe that you can adapt it to make it in your electric mixer bowl with a bread hook or even by hand (with lots of kneading!).  I usually take out about a cup of flour and replace with some whole wheat flour or flax meal, and I often just use my machine to make this dough and then form it into dinner rolls or hamburger buns.  It's very adaptable.

This time it's the 'no work' loaf of homemade bread right from your machine.  Make sure you have a 'large' machine as you need the 2 pound or 'large loaf' setting.  Put in the ingredients, turn it on and a few hours later, you'll have homemade bread ready to serve.


Classic Homemade Bread in Your Bread Machine

12 oz. warm water
1 1/2 t salt
2 T butter
4 c unbleached or bleached bread flour (or use all purpose if that is what you already have on hand*)
2 T dry milk powder
2 T sugar
1 3/4 t yeast, dry

Place the ingredients in your bread machine (in the order your machine requires).  If you've lost your instruction manual or can't find it, almost all bread machines off their manuals online.  Do an internet search and you'll find a copy. In mine, I place the water, butter and salt in first;  followed by the flour, dry milk and sugar.  Then use my knuckle or finger to make a little dip/hallow or indentation in the top and put the yeast there.

Use your setting for a 2 pound loaf or large loaf.  Remove from your machine when finished and let cool on your counter until time for serving.


*This recipe can also be adapted to make dinner rolls, hamburger buns, bread braids, etc. Even pizza crusts.  Just use your dough setting on your machine.  I've also used this particular recipe to make it from scratch by hand (lots of work but it's what our great grandmothers did!) and I typically and usually just use my KitchenAid mixer to mix it up with the bread dough hook attachment.

I've posted this recipe in various forms many times on An American Housewife since 2006. You can find adaptations in my search engine or if you want to see the 'dough' instructions for the mixer and how I made them into buns, one of my posts can be found here:  http://www.housewifebarbie.com/2012/05/homemade-rolls-or-hamburger-buns.html.

*Although this recipe doesn't work using all whole wheat flour, you can replace a portion of the bread or AP flour with whole wheat.  I grind my own whole grain wheat from wheat berries and as you can tell in the photos in this post it has some 'wheat' to it and it's not all white bread.  I replaced about 2/3 cup with whole wheat and tossed in a bit of vital wheat gluten with vitamin C - although neither of these are necessary for this recipe.  It was/is originally an all white bread.  I've also added ground flax seed to this recipe without any issues.  It's pretty adaptable.


Print Friendly and PDF