Bread Machine Recipes To Get You Going

November 20, 2024 Sarah

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.

The Recipes:

Water Bagels Version 1

Bagels Version 2

No Sugar Added Sandwich White Bread

Honey White Bread

American-Style Pumpernickel Bread

Mozzarella Herb Bread

Bread Machine Slider Buns

Chocolate Bread

Bread Machine Dinner Rolls

Spiced Molasses Bread

Rosemary Potato Bread

Cornmeal Cranberry Bread

Parmesan Olive Bread

Tomato Basil Bread

Sandwich Bread

Brown Sugar Rosemary Bread

Sour Cream and Vanilla Bread

Basic 1.5 Pound White Bread

Basil Sandwich Bread

Molasses Bread

Herb and Parmesan Bread

Potato Bread

Herb Bread

Country Bread

Potato and Rosemary Bread

Milk and Honey Bread

Pumpkin Sandwich Bread

Parmesan Sandwich Bread

Bread Machine Bread Mix

Light Sourdough Bread

Gluten-Free Sandwich Bread

Tp happy – and easy – bread making.

~Sarah

Bioengineered Foods

Food Quality: Why Is Dry Pasta Not Good Anymore?

October 6, 2024 Sarah

This is one of those things that sits at the back of my mind, and I just chew at it, over and over in my mind.

Because I know it isn’t right, how does one prove it? How do you get others to notice what is going on? That it isn’t an addled conspiracy theory that one has developed out of a fever dream?

At the start of the pandemic years:

Pasta was perfectly normal. A cheap and easy-to-make carb to go with dinner, right? One could buy even Barilla brand still for $1 or less a box.

Then pasta became really hard to buy. In 2020 and 2021, it was rarely stocked at our grocery stores. It would come in and be bought up quickly. Last year, in 2023, it was fully stocked again, but it isn’t the same (and prices are more than double, even on sale). I would only buy it if it went on sale (and sales were often $1.50 and up a box for store brand).

And let’s not gloss over how many brands have gone to 12-ounce boxes instead of 16 ounces. The box is the same size to trick the eyes.

The cooking water was so starchy after boiling the pasta.

To explain it, think about how starchy boxed mac and cheese is when you drain the pasta. Now, make it far worse. I would cook the pasta for the lowest time to have it al dente, and it didn’t matter. I would find the pasta soft and squishy, and the weirdest aspect is that it falls apart. Egg noodles? They peel apart in strips. Macaroni falls apart in halves.

So, I started using our stockpile of pasta on hand since I often couldn’t find what we wanted at a price I was willing to pay.

Back in the day Kirk got a screaming deal on a ton of Barilla angel hair.

Yes, it expired in 2019. It is perfectly fine. Pasta, if stored correctly, does not go “bad.” Humidity isn’t an issue where we live and we don’t deal with bugs here that get into dry pasta or flour, which is a bonus.

This pasta cooks up perfectly. As it always does.

But if I try out a modern box, it is exactly what happens above: it is starchy and mushy, and it falls apart.

Standard pasta that one would find in any grocery store. Looks normal.

After cooking, the pot shows plenty of starch left behind. Notice the shredded pasta left behind. I cooked it to the minimum time on the package, 6 minutes, in plenty of water.

After draining, it immediately clumps together. Notice how it shreds? It’s glue-y and sticky. It doesn’t smell great, either. It’s like the aroma of cooked cardboard.

So what has changed?

Is it the flour? Pasta in a box is very simple. It usually contains only wheat flour and vitamins (which are required in all grain-based foods by the US government because it has nearly stopped all cases of deficiency of Folic Acid (such as spina bifida) in early pregnancy, often these birth defects happen in first months of pregnancy before the woman even knows. So, no, this isn’t a conspiracy. It’s been a law since 1998, and the cases have plummeted since then. So, the base ingredient hasn’t changed since 2020, but the wheat quality may have changed.

That is my theory. Or at least part of it.

The wheat is of lower quality, and something has changed in how the pasta is made.

Multiple crop failures have occurred globally in the past few years due to severe drought and storms that led to severe flooding. This isn’t just a North American issue (though the US grows only 6-7% of the global crop, we export a lot of wheat). Russia used to be a top wheat grower, but with the war and the embargoes, their exports have plummeted of late. China has faced severe growing issues as well.

If I were to put my tin foil hat on rather tightly, I might question just how little wheat flour they are using and that they are using more water than usual to dry it. But when you cook it, it falls apart, and the wheat itself is not high-quality.

Oh…and the US finally approved the first GMO (bioengineered) wheat seed to be grown in the United States at the end of August. Huh.

I do not feel our food supply chain is safe, and it hasn’t been in years. And well, the quality of wheat flour? That’s a discussion for another day….but it’s also something I have been watching.

~Sarah

Bioengineered Foods

“You Are Privileged!”

July 19, 2024July 19, 2024 Sarah

Anytime you think you haven’t seen it all, wander into the comments on reels and shorts on social media.

The other day, I saw a reel on Facebook where the comment section was playing into the victimhood many people create for themselves to avoid hard work. A woman had created it, talking about how she had just passed three years of cooking from scratch, at home, for all their meals. She was fully an ingredient household and rightfully proud that her family had gotten off of processed foods, eating out, and so much more.

And the bitter comments were shameful.

Don’t deny people their self-righteous anger, for sure.

Look at all that anti-government behavior! How dare she be in the kitchen, cooking fresh meat, veggies, and more!

For now, there is a group of people who seem to truly believe that being self-sufficient is an arm of White Nationalist behavior, where the kitchens of America are full of evil White racists bent on destroying democracy. I wish I were joking, but I am not. Why do I go into the comment section? I should know better.

But yes, should you carve the time out to cook for yourself (and your family/friends), you might as well be a Nazi—no matter your race, economic status, political stance, or gender. You are, at minimum, supporting it by simply cooking.

I find that many Americans (and also Europeans) are happy to sit on their couch or in bed, ready to complain about everything since they have an audience.

How AI imagines two bitter people sitting on their couch, surrounded by bags of delivered DoorDash…

They complain that cooking food is a sexist thing to enslave women. That freedom is buying food from multi-national corporations (which pay low and use the lowest quality ingredients) and using people to deliver it to their work and home, creating a further poverty hole for gig workers to slide into (though they don’t talk about the gig work usually).

That is progress, it seems to them.

They scream about how the reel personality has to be a “Trad Wife” and how she is holding everyone down—and she must be a breeder of children and a Christian, and she must be “x” or “x” (whatever fills their need at the moment).

The saddest part is this is right out of the communist playbooks (See “The Kitchen, The Dining Table, And Why It Matters” for my thoughts on that). Have people reliant on the system. In the 1920s-40s, there were government-sponsored cafeterias and no kitchens in apartment buildings.

Now, it relies on others to cook for you; somehow, you are freed by it. They never pause to consider how much they spend daily and how much isn’t nourishing food (Starbucks? Yesterday, I treated myself to a frozen lemonade. I was hot, and I thought…it’ll cool me down. A 20-ounce Venti cost me $6.68! I rarely go out for drinks, so I am somewhat out of the loop now, but wow, I’m glad I had gift money on my Starbucks app. Now imagine if I bought a $4 pastry with it. Nearly $11 a day. For $11, I could have gotten a lot more groceries, even with the current inflation.

If that argument fails, they switch to Ol’ Reliable: “You are privileged! It must be nice to have time and a kitchen to cook in, with all the ingredients.” It usually devolves into where the person must be rich to afford “food.” So, of course, they must be holding down everyone to live this life.

The irony is that it IS cheaper to cook from scratch. Even if building a pantry is expensive initially, you will eat it all. Is it better to spend $25 for one meal for one person? Or, instead, spend that $25 to buy food you can cook multiple meals with? (For example, 1 pound of pasta will serve 4-6 people and costs $1 to 2 depending on the brand and sales. A 5-pound bag of rice is $5 and will feed one many times. Go to an Asian restaurant and want rice? You will spend $1-5 for a tiny amount.

But it takes being willing to think beyond today. To be willing to do the hard work.

The Takeaway (for me):

Their arguments are based on their unhappiness. They don’t want to take care of themselves, and they want the government to do everything for them. They want free housing and food. They should only have to work a few hours a week and have the latest mobile phone. They want the lives they see on reality shows and “influencer” pages on social media, which are nearly all fake. They refuse to accept that most people don’t live in luxury but are just average.

When they see people who are actually happy and living a good (and honest) life, they react with anger. It’s everything they have been trained to want to hate. The people they hate have things they want but don’t want to put the time/effort into getting them.

And that is it:

We all get 24 hours a day. Many women work full-time yet come home and cook a meal. It’s part of life. Every human has to eat to survive. Some choose to invest time into their lives. And so what if it is women who do it? It may bring them happiness to nurture their family. Maybe there is no big picture, no hidden agenda. They want to save money and eat real food. Gasp.

Or you can sit at home and be a bitter prune seed. And wait for the government to feed them for free. They might not like what they get fed, though. A steady diet of bug protein, corn, and whatever else it finds to feed the masses cheaply.

I’ll take getting in the kitchen and doing the hard work. No matter how tired I am.

~Sarah

Bioengineered Foods · Recipes

Bread Machine Rosemary Potato Bread

March 11, 2024 Sarah

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

Bioengineered Foods · Recipes

Homemade Baked Bread versus Commercial Bread: Which Is More Affordable

February 2, 2024 Sarah

The other day on Facebook, a person told me that you shouldn’t bake your bread at home because bakery bread was so much superior and cost less. Now then, the person didn’t clarify whether this “bakery” was a stand-alone bakery or a grocery store bakery, where the bread is often made from frozen dough and finished on site. But as I mulled over it, the cost has never been why I made homemade bread. For us, it is about taste and the ingredient list. And for actual real bakery bread, it isn’t cheap. It is $7 to 12 a loaf!

And I’d go as far as to include the Soviet Union in my mindset. The boys and I were studying why it was in the Soviet Union that people didn’t bake bread at home for decades. While the lack of personal kitchens was a factor as the agrarian population moved into the cities, it was more that the cost of grain was very high (because they were not producing enough in the fields). The government took much of it to produce bread in factories, which kept the people dependent on them for basic survival. The bread was cheaply priced, at a loss to the government, but it was worth it for the control. The simple skill of baking bread at home was lost there, and rather quickly. So for the citizens, it was cheaper to buy bread. They couldn’t even afford to buy wheat if they could source it.

We buy flour in 25 to 50-pound bags as we bake a lot. This gets the price down even lower than the prices below. We pay $15.89 for 25 pounds of standard white all-purpose flour, about 64 cents a pound. And buy our yeast in 1-pound bricks at $8.49. We buy both in a restaurant supply store to save more (no membership needed).

It takes us less than 2 pounds of flour and 2¼ tsp of active dry yeast to make 2 loaves of sandwich bread. I am making 2 loaves of white bread for less than $1.50, including sugar, salt, and oil.

And I am not reliant on anyone for a loaf of bread as long as I keep the supplies on hand.

Feeling fevered, I headed to the store and took photos of the current white all-purpose flour, bread flour, and commercial bread costs. To see what both 10-pound and 5-pound bags cost at a regular grocery store.

Organic white all-purpose flour. 10 pounds for $16.19. It is $1.62 per pound.

Gold Medal Flour Bread. 10 pounds for $12.59. It is $1.26 per pound,

Gold Medal white all-purpose flour. 10 pounds for $9.99. It is $0.99 per pound.

King Arthur white bread flour. 5 pounds for $$10.09. It is $2.02 per pound.

Gold Medal white bread flour. 5 pounds for $7.19. It is $1.44 per pound.

Bob’s Red Mill white bread four. 5 pounds for $7.29. It is $1.46 per pound.

Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose flour. 5 pounds for $5.49. It is $1.10 per pound.

The Takeaway:

Even the most expensive flour at $2.02 per pound (King Arthur bread flour, 5-pound bag) will make 2 loaves of bread for $5. I’d say I proved my point. It IS more affordable. Yes, you have to build your time in, and the cost of baking; what you get back is well worth it.

Commercial Bread:

The most “affordable” loaf of bread that wasn’t the lowest grade possible was on sale for $3.49 a loaf. It usually sells for $5.29. This is a soft bread that stays fresh far too long.

Texas Toast, the staple of grilled cheese in the PNW, is not cheap at $5.19 a loaf, though it was on sale at $4.49.

Franz is a PNW corporation that produces much of the bread sold in grocery stores. It’s large loaves that stay oddly soft a long time. While on sale this week, it’s average price is nearly $6 a loaf.

Dave’s Killer Bread was once a PNW brand, run by Dave. It’s not anymore and is now run coast to coast by a large corporation. At $7.59 it isn’t cheap. Years ago I actually was given a sample of his bread by Dave himself. And it was a lot more affordable then.

This is a normal price for organic commercial bread. $6.29, and the loaf is quite small. Who knows what “sustainably baked” means? It’s from a large factory so one has to wonder. Nothing but buzzwords. (Oh wait, I looked it….”We match 100% of the electricity we use in our bakeries with renewable wind energy credits.” So yes, buzzwords.)

This Is How Simple Bread Is:

You only need a few ingredients to make white sandwich bread: Yeast, water, salt, sugar, oil, and flour. What we eat doesn’t have to be complicated.

To compare to commercial bread:

Naked Bread, white:

ENRICHED UNBLEACHED WHEAT FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN AND FOLIC ACID), WATER, SUGAR, YEAST, VITAL WHEAT GLUTEN, SALTED BUTTER. CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF EACH OF THE FOLLOWING:, SALT, DOUGH CONDITIONER (ASCORBIC ACID), DISTILLED VINEGAR, ENZYMES.
CONTAINS: WHEAT, MILK

Orowheat Organic Rustic White:

ENRICHED WHEAT FLOUR [WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN, FOLIC ACID], WATER, CANE SUGAR, YEAST, WHEAT GLUTEN, SEA SALT, VEGETABLE OIL [SOYBEAN OIL, SUNFLOWER OIL, CANOLA OIL], CULTURED WHEAT FLOUR, GRAIN VINEGAR, NATURAL FLAVOR, CITRIC ACID, SESAME SEEDS

Franz Buttermilk:
Enriched Unbleached Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin And Folic Acid), Water, Sugar, Potato Flour, Buttermilk Solids, Yeast, Soybean Oil, Contains 2% Or Less Of Each Of The Following: Vital Wheat Gluten, Salt, Xanthan Gum, Ascorbic Acid, Cultured Wheat Flour, Calcium Sulfate, Enzymes. Contains: Wheat, Milk

Franz Texas Toast:

ENRICHED UNBLEACHED WHEAT FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, MALTED BARLEY FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE, RIBOFLAVIN AND FOLIC ACID), WATER, SUGAR, YEAST, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF EACH OF THE FOLLOWING: SALT, SOYBEAN OIL, DISTILLED VINEGAR, YEAST NUTRIENT (AMMONIUM SULFATE), DOUGH CONDITIONERS (SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, ASCORBIC ACID, MONOCALCIUM PHOSPHATE), EXTRACT OF MALTED BARLEY, DEXTROSE, YELLOW CORN FLOUR, TURMERIC (COLOR), ANNATTO (COLOR), CALCIUM PROPIONATE (MOLD INHIBITOR), ENZYMES.

Now onto the good stuff: Simple homemade bread. And a recipe that is so easy to follow.

White Sandwich Loaves

Ingredients:

2¼ tsp dry active yeast (1 packet)
2¼ cups warm water (110-115°)
3 Tbsp granulated sugar
1 Tbsp salt
2 Tbsp avocado oil
6¼ to 6¾ cups all-purpose flour (plus more for kneading potentially)
Oil for bowl

Directions:

Add the yeast and warm water in a stand mixer, and let sit for 5 minutes for the yeast to bloom.

Add in the sugar, salt, oil, and 3 cups flour. With a bread hook, combine.

Add more flour, ½ cup at a time, until a soft dough forms. You may or may not use all your flour (depending on humidity).

Sprinkle flour on a work surface and knock the dough out.

Knead for 8 to 10 minutes, adding flour, as needed, until the dough is smooth and elastic (not sticking to your hands).

In a large mixing bowl, add a swirl of oil to it. Place dough in and flip over to get oil on both sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a clean towel.

Set aside to rise in a warm area (in cooler homes, place on a heating pad, set on low) for 1½ hours or until doubled.

Punch down the dough and cut it in half. Gently roll each piece into a rectangle, then fold over like an envelope.

Place each loaf into a lightly oiled 9×5″ bread pan.

Cover and let rise for 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375° and bake loaves for 35 minutes, or until golden brown and the bread sounds hollow when tapped on top.

Remove and knock out onto a cooling rack.

Once cooled, bread can be sliced and frozen for later use. Remove frozen slices as needed and thaw on the counter.

Makes 2 loaves.

~Sarah