Fresh Bread!

If you've been following me on Facebook or Twitter you know that my awesome hubby gave me an early birthday present last Thursday. As always, he had found a really good deal on something and needed to order it in a timely manner. He didn't actually mean to give it to me early but this was the outer box it came in.

Kevin had told me he ordered something for my birthday so I knew not to open any packages that came in the next few days. What can you do when the box says what it is, though? It came while Kevin was at work so I could have just left it on the front porch and pretended I didn't see it. I've long since determined that I'm not a good enough liar for that kind of thing, though. So when he got home that night I said, "I really hate to burst your bubble, sweetie, but I think my birthday present came today and it says what it is on the box. Thank you for the bread maker." He was a little disappointed but he was kind of impatient for me to try it to make sure it works anyway. 

We went and got ingredients Friday evening so we could try a plain white loaf. The bread maker has a timer feature so you can put the ingredients in and walk away and it will start the process by itself about 4 hours before you want the bread done. So we put in our ingredients and set the timer so the bread would be ready Saturday morning around 9am.

Results

Waking up to warm, fresh baked bread is officially one of the best things ever. 

So yummy!

Since then we've made two more loaves for a grand total of three loaves in three days. The machine is so easy to use. (And as the Georgia summer is approaching it's especially nice to be able to make bread without having the oven on heating the house up.) So far we've tried plain white bread and plain wheat bread and we like the white bread better. We have a whole bunch of this stuff in our food storage, though, so we're getting a grinder and we're going to try some honey wheat and cinnamon raisin and other recipes until we find a wheat recipe we love.

Do you have a favorite bread recipe (wheat or otherwise)? Do tell!