Bread Machine Recipes To Get You Going

Do you own a bread machine that sits hidden, sadly unused, because you don’t have easy-to-pull-together recipes to use?

You might be shocked (or not) that for many bread machine owners, this is their reality. You might be lucky with most brands to get a couple of “starter” recipes with your machine in a tiny booklet. In the 90s, my mom was gifted a tiny bread machine, and bread mixes were all the rage. They are still sold in stores, near the cake mixes, and online, and the price for a single loaf is ridiculous! It’s often $10 a loaf or more. You might as well go to a fancy bakery and buy an artisan loaf at those prices.

Unlike most machine owners, I use our Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme Breadmaker multiple times weekly.

If I buy commercially made bread from the grocery store, it often sits until it’s hard and stale, and then the chickens enjoy pecking at it. I do not like buying commercially made bread due to the ingredient list as well. A simple white bread is nothing more than water, a bit of olive oil, avocado oil or butter, salt, yeast, and flour, maybe a bit of sugar or honey.

You don’t need bread, which uses cheap oil (soybean oil is from GMO/BE soybeans), vinegar for long life, dough conditioners, or mold inhibitors. And far too many brands use worse options.

This is a “simple homestyle” bread sold commercially by Franz Bread in the PNW of the US.

ENRICHED UNBLEACHED WHEAT FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR), WATER, SUGAR, YEAST, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF EACH OF THE FOLLOWING: VITAL WHEAT GLUTEN, SALTED BUTTER (MILK), HONEY, SOYBEAN OIL, SALT, DISTILLED VINEGAR, DOUGH CONDITIONERS (SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, ASCORBIC ACID), CALCIUM PROPIONATE (MOLD INHIBITOR), ENZYMES.

There are many “extras” we just don’t need, especially if we have a machine to help us. The beauty of bread machines is that they do the hard work, and it is nearly hands-off. I spend about 5 minutes getting the ingredients and a couple of minutes watching the first knead. And then magically have fresh bread in a couple of hours.