Country Honey Bread-maker Bread

Since this is a partner post to my post on making my own croutons, I don’t want to go too far into where I draw the line at too much from-scratchness and how it’s less craftiness and more just being, shall we say, economically minded that inspired me to make my own bread. Been there, done that.

TL;DR: Homemade bread is cheap, but waste not! There are lots of ways to use stale bread.

But yeah, I make a lot of bread for us.

Bread makers make it ridiculously easy. I was gifted an Oster about 10 years ago and it has contentedly been chugging away making our bread for most of that time.

And it has a timer, so before I go to bed at night, I can throw a bunch of ingredients into the pan, close it, set it, and wake up to the utterly delicious smell of fresh bread.

You know, there’s got to be a market for this. They make alarms that awaken you with soft and soothing music that gradually grows louder and light that slowly brightens the room. Why not make one that slowly fills your room with delicious smells?

If you don’t want to use your bread maker, that is.

I have a number of different recipes I keep on rotation – just plain white bread, oatmeal bread, wheat bread, and even the occasional rye or sourdough {which I love, but are trickier to make} – but my absolute favorite is my country honey bread.

It’s a simple white bread base, but instead of adding sugar, you add honey, and instead of water, you add warm milk. The result is a rich and tasty bread that is delicious in French toast and nice and hearty regular toast, too.

Just add honey.

Country Honey Bread-maker Bread

Makes 1-1.5 lb loaf

What You’ll Need:

• 1 cup warm milk (115F)
• 1 1/2 tbsp butter, diced
• 1 large egg
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 4 cups bread flour
• 2 tbsp honey
• 2 tsp active dry yeast

How to Make It:

1. Add the milk, butter, egg, and honey to the bread pan.

2. In a large bowl, whisk together the salt and bread flour, and then add to the bread pan.

3. Make a well in the flour, not touching the wet ingredients, and add the yeast. Don’t let the yeast come into contact with the liquid when adding the ingredients.

4. Snap the baking pan into your bread-maker and follow the bread-maker’s instructions to set and cook. For an Oster like ours, use the Basic setting for a 1.5lb loaf and set for a medium crust.

5. When cooked, remove from the bread-maker, slice, and enjoy!

Many companies will advise you to not cook in your bread-maker all the time, but to use the dough setting to prolong its life. We’ve been cooking in ours and doing just fine. Go figure.

You can make this bread using the same ingredients without a bread-maker, but that involves a lot of extra steps for activating the yeast, letting the bread rise, and such that I’ll share in a future post. This is the simple version, folks.

Here’s to kicking off a great week!