Raisin Bread
A long time ago I bought a bread machine with a gift certificate I had received. I was still in high school then and I didn’t know much about baking. After many failed bread attempts (yeast was not my friend), we finally put the breadmaker away and it sat in storage for a long time.
With all my breadmaking recently, I decided to bring the breadmaker out of my parent’s storage and brought it back to San Diego. My original plan was to use the breadmaker to make the yummy tangzhong method breads I’ve been making. But I’ve actually found that my stand mixer does a great job of mixing the dough. So so far I haven’t tried making any tangzhong bread with the bread machine.
This past weekend, I dusted off the recipe booklet included in my bread machine box and decided to test out the machine by making some simple white bread with raisins. I love raisins in bread. I don’t know why. The bread smelled great and the bread was pretty soft after it was baked. But the bread isn’t nearly as soft and fluffy as the tangzhong method of making bread I’ve gotten used to making.
Next time I’ll have to attempt making tangzhong bread with my bread machine. I still need to work on my bread slicing skills. I have a hard time keeping the bread fibers smoothe. A lot of the time they get caught on my knife and shredded. Anyone have any bread knife recommendations?
Raisin Bread
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 1 /2 tsp salt
- 3 cups bread flour
- 1 tbsp granulated sugar
- 2 tsp active dry yeast
- 1 cup raisins, optional
Instructions
- Add the water and butter to the bread pan. Add the salt, flour and sugar on top of the water and butter. Don’t mix them together.
- Make a well in the dry ingredients. Make sure there is no water seeping through because the yeast cannot come into contact with the liquid. Add the yeast to the well.
- Place the baking pan into the breadmaker and snap it into place. Close the lid.
- Press the “select” button and choose the basic setting. Press the “crust color” button and choose either light, medium or dark crust. Press the “start/stop” button to make the bread. If using raisins, add them in when the bread is just about done kneading. Some bread machines will have a built-in option and will pause to let you add in mix-ins.
Notes
- Recipe source: Oster
- Nutrition estimate does not include the raisins.
Just wondering, but do you work as a freelance blogger or anything in the food field?
Nope! Just someone who decided to start a blog. =)
I like the Forschner Fibrox from http://www.cutleryandmore.com. It doesn’t shred the bread at all and it is very reasonable. It was recommended by America’s Test Kitchen.
Thanks! I’ll look into this!
Wow – that bread looks exactly the raisin bread you get from 99 Ranch!
I’m seriously impressed w/ your tangzhong method. I really need to muster up the courage to try it one day. Just seems like ALOT of work!
Yeast isn’t my friend either 🙂 I avoid baking breads pretty much b/c of this.
I like working with instant yeast, which is also the bread machine yeast. You don’t have to let it bubble in water so it’s harder to mess up. I think the bread came out pretty because of the bread machine. Not really anything I did. =)
Ha, I did the same thing with my old breadmaker. I had one of the original Breadman machines. The different breads I made were okay but never really wow’ed me. Plain white and raisin bread were the best but the whole wheat ones not so good. Like you said, it was great an kneading dough and I ended up making lots of dough for cinnamon rolls but stopped using it to bake bread. I finally got rid of it when I got my stand mixer.
Yeah, I thought it was me, but now I’m pretty sure it is just the bread machine. The breads do come out pretty, like the loaves I buy at the store, but they don’t taste great..My mom has a friend that has a breadmaker from Japan that makes amazing bread, but it was also really expensive and not available in the US.