Bread For Success

~For Christmas, I received from my parents (among other things) a bread making machine. I love bread, but frankly, I don't want to go through the bother of making it from scratch, so instead I have turned to modern technology to make life easier. Yesterday, I made my first attempt at bread baking:

^ The Machine: a Panasonic SD-YD250. And I thought Panasonic only made cameras...

^ The Ingredients: strong flour, sugar, salt, butter, active dry yeast, water, and powdered milk. I actually learned quite a bit about what exactly these ingredients are for in the baking process. For example:

• There are different kinds of flour: strong, weak, whole-wheat, all-purpose, and others, each of which creates a different kind of bread. For example, strong flour (used in all recipes for this bread machine) has a higher content of the protein necessary for the development of gluten; "weak" flour has less protein, and therefore creates bread with a lighter, crumbly texture (which is good for making cakes and pastries).

• Adding milk in baking adds to the flavor and nutritional content of the bread. You can use regular milk, but since baking takes time, it's best to use powdered dry milk to avoid spoilage (especially if you set the timer on the machine to make bread in, say, 12 hours from now).
  

• Salt strengthens the gluten structure, which makes the bread more stretchable. It does this by inhibiting yeast production. It's very important to use EXACT measurements for salt, even more so than with the other ingredients, because using too much or too little salt can easily result in "collapsed" bread with unpleasant texture.

• I was pleased to discover that I (mostly) remembered the chemical process that yeast creates when baking: it converts sugars to carbon dioxide (CO2) and alcohol (C2H6O). This gas production is what causes the bread to rise. The alcohol evaporates during baking, which is fortunate, otherwise humans would be drunk all the time on bread products.
  

^ The Result: a large preservatives-free loaf of soft, warm, delicious bread! If you listen hard enough while staring at this picture, you can hear the late Dr. Atkins screaming in his grave. But who cares what he thinks? It's time to break out the peanut butter!