I take zero credit for it.
When I posted about last week’s not-so-successful experiment with my new bread machine, so many of you offered up helpful tips, and last night I gave it another shot (starting at the much more reasonable hour of 4PM, so the timer literally dinged at the exact moment that the rest of the meal was ready, which was very exciting and also sort of a coincidence).
This time around, I used The Daily Julie’s recipe (created by her Uncle Tony, who I now need to have a sit-down with for more cooking tips), and it was perfect perfect perfect.
I also took to heart Sublimare’s fabulous tip: “I consider my bread machine a mother trying to make dinner and myself the toddler ‘helping mommy cook.’ The less you do to ‘help out’, the better the bread turns out.” I actually pretended I was a little kid dumping in the ingredients the way a kid would (i.e. not trying to evenly distribute the yeast, that kind of thing), and: yes.
Want to see?!
(I am so proud.)
BOOM.
Want another?
THAT’S RIGHT.
Here’s The Daily Julie’s Uncle Tony’s recipe, reprinted from the comments under this post (my notes are indicated with asterisks).
What you need:
9 1/2 oz HOT water
2 tbsp butter (*My butter was cold, so I just cut it up into pieces; Julie agreed that this is fine)
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 c bread flour
2 1/2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp powdered milk (*I used nonfat because that’s what my store carried)
1 tsp yeast (*I used the Fleischmann’s packets that I had left over from my last experiment, but other readers suggested buying it in a jar or a brick)
What you do:
Put all ingredients in bread machine in the order listed. Set bread machine on 1 1/2 loaf, medium crust.
Note: If you want dinner rolls, just remove dough before bake cycle, form into balls and bake in the oven. Likewise, it makes great cinnamon rolls: just roll out dough, add a generous amount of butter, sugar and cinnamon, roll it up, slice into rounds and put in greased pan to bake (Bake 15-20 minutes or until golden brown at 375F.)
