|
THE BREAD MACHINE The box was waiting on my doorstep one evening: a big, heavy package from a company I didn't recognize, and no clue who might have sent it. It was a few weeks past Christmas, so I was mystified. I hauled it in and opened it, sending an avalanche of styrofoam peanuts all over the floor as I pulled up the box inside the box and saw the picture - a bread machine. It only took a moment for me to see my little sister's sneaky pawprints all over this event. She'd been singing the praises of her bread machine for years. "You should get one," she'd told me over and over. "It's so easy. It comes out great. And you can make whole wheat bread in it, or pumpernickel, or anything." "But I like to make bread the old-fashioned way," I kept telling her. "I like to knead the dough, that's part of the fun, and so therapeutic. I like to shape the loaves." She knows I'm an advocate of slow food, that I don't even own a microwave. But she also knows about the reality of my life. I don't make bread all that often anymore; the therapeutic kneading and shaping is a luxury of time. "Late Christmas present," she said when I called her. "Try it." I read the instructions, loaded it up, measuring very carefully as instructed, and pushed the button. For the shakedown cruise I felt I should try the basic sandwich loaf, though I couldn't resist using milk instead of water. I watched through the wee window in the top of the machine, fascinated. A couple of hours later, the kitchen began to fill with that wonderful, seductive fragrance - fresh bread. The moment that first loaf was done, I slid it out of the pan and sliced it. I didn't even think about he suggested cool down. The boys and I sat around the kitchen table spreading butter on steaming hot slices and growling with pleasure. We were pretty well hooked with the first loaf, but when I tested the timer function, there was no turning back. "You mean you can set it the night before, like a coffee machine?" my son exclaimed in wonder. My kids and I use powerful computers, stay in constant touch by cell phone, and ride in cars with satellite mapping screens on the dashboard, but this simple bread machine stunned us with a kind of culture-shock. Bread and technology didn't mix for us. We're used to getting bread from Peter, our neighbor at the bottom of the hill who bakes his loaves in a wood-fired outdoor oven that he built himself from bricks and adobe. The next morning we woke to the smell of baking bread, a smell that drifted upstairs and slid right under the covers, like a kind of magic. High school kids are not known for their enthusiasm in the early morning, but Christopher came bounding down the stairs, picked up the warm loaf in his hands and held it up to his nose and breathed in deeply. "This is the bomb!" I decided I could get over my prejudice against machine made bread, and we began having hot bread for breakfast every day. Before long my tendency to experiment asserted itself, and I was tinkering with the formula. I made whole wheat bread, and rye bread, I added this and that. What I really wanted for breakfast was a slightly sweet oatmeal bread, so I fooled around with that idea, adding more oats, brown sugar, a bit of whole wheat flour, until I had a loaf that was dense enough to be satisfying, but tender and sweet enough to be seductive. The teenagers ate half a loaf every morning, and the rest after school. It became the breakfast special every day. Once the breakfast loaf was established, I played with other ideas - buttermilk for a tangy loaf, currants or raisins and chopped pecans for a bread with great texture. I worked on a formula for a bran bread, and an old-fashioned squaw bread with some cornmeal in it. Then I decided to make cinnamon rolls. I wanted to try the "dough" setting, in which the machine mixes, kneads, and rises the dough, then I take it out, shape it and bake it in a conventional oven. You get to put your hands in the dough, but not quite as much, and you can go out and have a lunch meeting while the first steps are being handled. I rolled out the silky dough, spread it with butter and sprinkled on the sugar and cinnamon. I rolled it up, I sliced it, I laid the spirals on a pan. This is fun, I thought, getting my fingers sticky. I'm going to make pretzels next. And then I realized it - here I was, doing the old- fashioned thing, which I almost certainly would not be doing if I didn't have this new toy. Irony is not dead. With my amazing time-saving device, I'm spending more time than ever in the kitchen, handling dough, shaping loaves and buns, figuring out wonderful new breads. It's irresistible. I'm sure that many of you have had bread machines for years, and know more about it than I do, but I'm passing along the recipe for oatmeal bread that has become such a favorite at my breakfast table, and the delicious cinnamon rolls. Of course, these can both be made without bread machines, using traditional methods, but hey - how old-fashioned is that?
|