Works for Me Wednesday – January 13, 2010

I can’t really think of any really great, life changing tips to share with you this week. I went grocery shopping today and it wore me out! But there is one thing I can think of to share with you that is definitely working out well for me.

Fir my birthday this year (which is right before Christmas) my mom sent me a gift card and told me I was to use it to purchase a bread machine. I was ecstatic! I love home baked bread, but it can be very time consuming, especially as much as my family likes it! This is the machine I purchased:

It is an Oster Expressbake and it sells at Wal-Mart for just under $60. It has been such a blessing! It only takes me about 5-10 minutes to gather the ingredients, mix them in the pan, and set the cycle on my machine. In 3 hours I have a delicious, golden loaf of home baked bread! And then in a matter of a few minutes, half of it is gone, LOL!

I have found that the bread does turn out better most of the time when you use half bread flour and half all purpose flour. One more thing I have learned after trying at least a dozen recipes so far, is that there is one that we really love and it always turns out perfect!

Portuguese Sweet Bread

1 c. room temperature milk

1 large egg (I warn it slightly by placing in a cup of warm water)

2 tbsp. butter or margerine

3 c. flour

1/3 cup sugar

3/4 tsp. salt

2 1/2 tsp. active dry yeast or 1 1/4 tsp. rapid rose yeast (otherwise known as bread machine yeast)

Mix the ingredients according to your bread machine instructions. Most recommmend placing all of your wet ingredients in first (milk, egg, butter) then the dry ingredients last. Set your machine to the sweet bread setting (the traditional bake cycle works too, I have tried both) and that’s it!

Enjoy!

Blessings,

: ) Cassie