Recipe collection: Perfect Bread Machine Bread

(originally posted on another blog of mine a year ago)

1 cup 115°F water
2 tsp Red Star Bread Machine yeast
3 T C&H Sugar
¼ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil (EVOO)
2 ½ cups bread flour
½ cup whole wheat flour
1 ½ tsp salt

Get ready: Take the pan out of the bread machine, and leave/put the paddle in. This recipe will have you add ingredients in an order different from your machine’s instructions say to, but it won’t break it or anything bad. On the contrary, it’ll make quite the yummy loaf of bread. This is made at 170ft above sea level, your elevation may necessitate changing things a bit.

Pour water into bread machine pan, then sprinkle yeast and sugar in. Don’t mix, just let it set. Wait 10 minutes, mixture should be foamy (this is called proofing and must happen, if it doesn’t, get new yeast and try again). In the meantime, get the EVOO ready and mix together the flours and salt together. After 10 minutes, gently pour the oil in, then slowly pour the flour mixture.

Set your machine to White Bread cycle, medium color, 1 ½ lb loaf. Push start. Leave it alone, it’s ok if the machine misses little bits of dough, it won’t ruin anything. Just leave the whole thing alone. Don’t open the lid, until the machine tells you it’s done. Then, immediately remove the pan, then remove the loaf from the pan and set on a wire rack to cool for 15-30 minutes. Don’t slice before 15 minutes. The loaf won’t turn out as well if you let it set in the machine and/or pan after it’s done cooking. I screwed up a loaf 3 days ago by going outside and weeding 30 minutes before the bread was done and it sat in the pan for an hour, and the whole loaf just went from -oh my god- amazing to -yuck store bought bread-