Basic Breadmaker Bread

A loaf of Basic Bread ready for the oven!

There is nothing better than butter melting over a slice of bread straight from the oven.  LOVE it.  Unfortunately, I don't get along well with the "making bread" process.  If I buy the frozen loaves, they don't turn out.  If I make them from scratch, they don't turn out.  I have actually had "bread" so horribly hard that it wound up in the garbage as we couldn't slice it with a knife.

I'm glad to say, THIS recipe is not one of those failures.

THIS recipe was a success.  It's also so unbelievably simple - why hadn't I found this recipe before?  It would have saved me much stress over the last few years!  Miss Mia LOVED the dough.  Again, I would let it sit in front of the fire, and I noticed the towel had a strange look.  Here, my little baker was over there "testing" the dough.  Over and over.

She also enjoyed washing her hands and "POPPING" the dough.

I'm thinking my goal will be to make at least one loaf of this bread a week!  This was gone within 24 hours of my having made it the first time!

Unfortunately, I have no clue as to the origin of this recipe.  By the way, the main "tweek" to this recipe was my using whole wheat flour as well as all purpose flour.  You can most definitely use only all purpose flour.

Basic Breadmaker Bread
~ adapted from ???

1 cup warm water
2 T sugar
2 1/2 tsp yeast
1/4 cup canola oil
2 cups flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp sea salt

Place the water, sugar and yeast in the bread machine pan.  Let sit 10 minutes, until foamy.  Add oil, flours and salt.  Chose 'dough' setting on your bread machine. 

Let the machine knead the bread.  Then, remove before it starts to rise (I think my machine had been working around 40 minutes of the 90 minute setting when I removed the dough) into a large bowl sprayed with cooking spray.  Cover with bar cloth.  Let rise approximately 20 minutes.  Punch down (knead the dough) and place in bread pan for final rise.  Cover with bar cloth.  Let sit until bread is approximately an inch above the baking pan. 

Preheat oven to 350F.  Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown (I had to bake mine around 25 minutes).

Remove from oven and TRY to let it cool a few minutes before slicing into it and coating it with butter!

This bread also bakes up well in the bread maker. I simply like the look of my bread from the oven better (and don't have to dig the little mixing paddle out of my oven baked bread).