Kitchen Experiment: Baking Bread

Finally! Soft, pillowy, delicious white bread baked at home!

   Our first loaf of bread success

All sliced up

Today is a special day worthy of a star in my kitchen diary.  We have finally succeeded in baking bread.  The kind  of bread that is comparable to store bought breads -- soft, fluffy with a crisp brown crust.  My mother even exclaimed that it was  better than her usual Gardenia white loaf.

I have always thought of myself as a pretty good home baker but bread is my waterloo. The few times I've attempted making bread, they either came out too yeasty, too white, too soft or too hard. Somehow between the moment I proof my yeast, to the kneading and resting times, something goes wrong and I am left with a serviceable but not really delicious loaf of bread.

But not anymore! And the best part is, it didn't take a lot of effort on my part to bake the bread. Because the truth is, I didn't...

My Sunbeam Programmable Breadmaker did all the work!

The viewing window in the Sunbeam Programmable Bread Maker (Bought from Amazon.com)

Some may say this is cheating, but I don't mind, because see, with my bread machine I only

need to measure the correct proportions of yeast, water, sugar, salt and flour (plus any add-ins I want), choose my setting (it has a white bread, whole wheat, baguette, pizza, express bake and jam settings) and press start. My white bread took 3 hours to make, not fast enough, but considering I did not do any kneading and proofing and just let the machine do all the hard work, it's still amazing.

The machine beeped after every stage is finished, and the digital face of the breadmaker showed how much time is left before the bread is baked, so one can forget about the bread baking in the machine and concentrate with other tasks.  Once the bread is done, the machine automatically shifts to auto keep-warm cycle. 

My brother's bacon and egg sandwich made using our home baked loaf of bread

The people in my household are excited dreaming up all sorts of breads to make. Imagine that? From being scared of making bread,we are now looking for all sorts of bread permutations to make! Tomorrow, we'll try making something sweeter, Whole Wheat Raisin and Choco Chip Bread!

One can get the Sunbeam Bread Maker from Amazon: Sunbeam Programmable Bread Maker.

Important note: I bought this from the US and like all US appliances, this has 120 volt power requirement. Thus, unless your home have 120 volt sockets, you will need a step-down transformer to use this and other appliances from the US.