Are bread machine mixes any good? Yes, some of them are, but the problem with all bread machine mixes is that they limit your choice and discourage your creative talents. That may sound a little harsh, but think about it for a minute. If you rely on bread machine mixes you can only make the bread for which you can find a bread machine mix and you can only put the bread machine mix in the bowl and switch the bread making machine on. You are not encouraged to alter the bread machine mix for fear that it won’t work.
OK, what is the alternative? Well, the old-fashioned recipe book, of course! Not just any old recipe book, but a special bread making machine recipe book. Bread making is a very easy, but very tiresome process. The ingredients are ubiquitous, everyday, household items: water, flour, yeast, salt, sugar and oil. You most certainly have those items in your kitchen with the possible exception of yeast, which can be bought in any super store for very little money and it keeps for ages.
And I’m sure you already know what happens when you follow a recipe, don’t you? You have read the recipe through and you know you have everything in the kitchen, but when the recipe calls for, let’s say, sultanas, you open the cupboard door and see that you don’t have any sultanas – they were currants! Oh, well you think, they’ll do. You make do. You experiment. And that means that you are developing your skills and creativity. Bread making mixes cannot and will not do that for you.
A good bread making machine recipe book will have something over 100 recipes coming from a number of different countries and you will become really enthusiastic about experimenting with the various ones. Have you ever tasted Welsh bread – Bara Brith? Or English muffin bread? Jalapeno bread or banana bread? Onion bread is lovely too, but one of my all time favourites is Brazil Nut Bread – absolutely delicious.
The fact is that you may not find recipes for all these breads in one recipe book, but if you have a safe starting point, like a bread recipe cookbook, you can |begin|start off by using already tried and tested gourmet bread recipes and gradually invent your own – ofttimes out of necessity.
I once made a |really great|fantastic loaf of bread by adding all of the leftover vegetables from my Sunday meal. It was very tasty, however I could never quite make the same loaf again, because I had not written down the weights and measures of the vegetables. I could only remember that it had green beans, potatoes and sweet corn in it!
Bread machine mixes will never in a million years give you that, will they? And bread machine mixes are relatively expensive compared to the cost of five kilos of flour. I always vary the ingredients too: honey instead of sugar, milk instead of water, olive oil or butter instead of say, corn oil. Rock salt instead of sea salt or visa versa. You get the picture.
Bread machine mixes are limited and limiting. A bread making machine is a great way to use up leftovers. I have often put meat and fruit in my gourmet bread. My principle is: if it’ll go in a sandwich it’ll go in the dough – like an Indian stuffed paratha or stuffed naan bread.
Don’t waste your money buying bread machine mixes – instead be creative with a bread machine recipes cookbook.
