Breadmaking

We've had our breadmaker for 9 months now and I've been thinking about how we've been using it.

We all enjoy a loaf of fresh white bread, usually using the French Bread setting. This recipe has few ingredients and even Emily will eat it (Emily is not a fan of bread!). It also toasts well on the second day.

It takes 3:20hrs so if we want to have it for lunch I really need to plan it and get it going the night before, which is why we don't have it so often, I usually forget till half way through the morning. Ideally I would like to make this bread every Saturday for lunch, so I need to get into a routine of setting it on Friday nights.

During the week we made bread rolls to go with a dinner. I used the plainer of the two recipes in the Breville instruction booklet that came with my breadmaker. They looked ok but were kind of blah to eat. The other recipe contains egg and milk, and I don't like them so much, but the girls do. So maybe I'll try them again.

I've used some ready-made bread mixes (sourdough rye, and multigrain) but the girls will eat the white bread more readily, and my body copes better now with white bread than wholemeal, so the French bread recipe works for us.

Other things I've tried are raisin bread, cinnamon swirl buns and apple cinnamon loaf (note to self, remember to set the "Nuts" function), and they were all delicious.

The thing we use our breadmaker for most is pizza dough. Since it takes only 50mins plus a fw minutes of rolling at the end, I can think of it at 11.00 on a Saturday morning and still have lunch in time, and it makes for a quick dinner too.

One of our favourite simple pizzas is:

Potato & Rosemary Pizza

Base

Grated cheese

Thinly sliced potatoes

Rosemary sprinkled on top.

Yum!

We just had this again for dinner tonight and since I made two, we'll have it again for lunch tomorrow. (So I won't need to start bread tonight after all!)

So all in all, I'm very happy with my breadmaker!

What kinds of breads and/or pizzas have you made?