A light and airy 1½ pound loaf of bread is easily made in your bread machine. Fresh bread requires only a few minutes of hands-on work. Then, walk away for 3 hours while your bread machine does the hard work for you. Delicious bread is waiting for you to enjoy.
Unlike this bread, which is sold as “freshly baked,” it was baked on March 6th and sold until the 10th. The photo was taken yesterday, on the 10th. Four-day-old bread isn’t fresh, and if you had homemade bread four days out, it would be rock hard and not edible—which is how bread should be!
While the ingredients are pretty straightforward (nearly all ground white wheat flour contains vitamins added to prevent birth defects in the US), cheap soybean oil gives pause; a loaf costs $4.49 and is the equivalent of a 1½ pound loaf made at home. (The soybean oil is also why the loaf carries a bioengineered notice.) Making bread is simple, whether by hand or using a bread machine like I often do. And it costs very little to make bread.
We dried rosemary last summer for the rosemary in this loaf. When you pick your rosemary, break off branches and place them in a clean brown paper bag. Let it sit in there until it is fully dry, then strip off the branch. Store the rosemary in a glass mason jar out of light and heat to preserve it. Air-dried rosemary has much more aroma and taste than commercially dried (which often looks like pale pine needles!). Depending on your variety, it may also have a high content of essential oils, as mine does. If your rosemary is pale/hard, you may need to whirl it in a blender to break it up.
Bread Machine Rosemary Potato Bread
Ingredients:
- 1¼ cups water
- 2 Tbsp olive oil
- 360 grams of all-purpose or bread flour
- ½ cup dry instant mashed potatoes
- 1 Tbsp dried rosemary, crumbled
- 1 TBsp granulated sugar
- 1½ tsp fine sea salt
- 2 tsp bread machine or quick-rise yeast
Directions:
Add ingredients in the order listed.
We use a Zojirushi bread machine, which heats the ingredients. Using a standard bread machine, use the temperature your machine calls for the water to be.
Set the machine to Basic/White and a medium crust. If your machine asks for size, it is a 1½ pound loaf.
After baking, remove the bread and let it cool on a wire rack. Then, store it in a bread bag.
Makes one loaf.
~Sarah