I would rather starve than eat your bread

Now is the time to use all of those wedding gifts that have never been used. The road to a yard sale is paved with good appliance intentions. At the very top of our laundry room storage closet sits, a bread maker...

When David and I registered for wedding gifts we didn’t have any issues on what to pick or what we needed. Except the bread maker. The Breadman Pro to be exact. We had no use for a bread maker and I had no want for one. David did. He registered for it at Target and, of course, someone bought the thing for $100. That was one big gift that we could have gotten something that we could actually use. Taking it back WOULD have been a good idea, but David was positive we would be lost without one. 

Almost 4 years later, the Breadman Pro has only been used once. David tried it the first year we had it. I wanted nothing to do with it and was still boycotting its existence and the massive amount of space it took up when storage space is always in short supply. I didn’t even eat the bread when he made it. I realize this makes me a brat.

I would say day 4 of having no job this thought crossed my mind , “I could use that fucking bread maker.”

I had no clue of what to do with the thing so I moseyed on over to Kroger. They have those boxes of bread mix that you can use in a bread machine. So I got one of those just to try it out. I followed the directions on the box of mix and as I am kneading the dough with my hands on flour covered wax paper, I think to myself, “If I have to do all of this bullshit then what good is it to have a bread maker? It needs to rise for 3 hours? Why don’t I just bake the shit in the oven? Dumb.” 

Then I looked at the actual book to the bread maker. 

Oh. 

If I hadn’t gotten all bake-sure of myself, I might have actually used the thing how it was intended to be used. All you have to do is throw all the ingredients in the bread maker, choose what type of bread it is, and hit start. It does the mixing, kneading, rising and baking for you. This whole bread maker phenomenon started to make a lot more sense to me. It’s actually kind of cool...for a kitchen appliance. 

So in a week and half I have made: 2 loaves of white bread, 2 loaves of Italian herb bread, a loaf of multigrain flax bread and a loaf of whole wheat bread. And just so no one will be overly concerned about my carb intake, I have been freezing the bread for later use. 

I wanted to make sourdough bread but you have to have a starter that you let sit and rise for 5 days, stirring 3 times a day. Then you use the starter as an ingredient to make the sourdough bread. I read the cockamammie instructions for the sourdough starter and thought “Who on earth has time to do this?” Wait. I do. 

So now sitting in the poorly used project room there is a loosely covered bowl of sourdough starter sitting on a long forgotten treadmill. So far I haven’t forgotten to stir the mixture 3 times a day. And in all seriousness I can barely contain my excitement for when I actually get to eat the sourdough bread. 

I also got asked the question, “Isn’t it cheaper to just buy a loaf of bread?” No. No it’s not. 

You can buy all the ingredients pretty cheap and the ingredients last for at least 5 loaves. Also the ingredients last a lot longer than a loaf of bread. Plus when you make your own there are none of those pesky preservatives in your bread. And with regular Wonder Bread (we buy Kroger brand bread, we aren’t proud), you don’t get the added bonus of saying “Yeah, I made that.”