Jan 07 2014
This was the second day of the bitter cold; about -11 when we got up this am. It warmed up to 8 deg. this afternoon. It was forecast to 6 deg. tonight but just checked at mid-night and it is 10 deg. Maybe the cold is starting to leave, supposed to get above 20 tomorrow. I was only outside about 10 min. today to clean some blown snow off the walk and drive.
We were having some leftovers for supper tonight. Some good bread and butter would be good but I had run out of bread. I drug out the bread machine from the garage. I have not used it for a few years.
The first one came out in 1986 and I probably bought mine about 1990 a Hitachi.
I baked a lot of bread the first few years; buying cookbooks for bread machines. I experimented with all types of bread. I never had great luck with dark or heavy breads. A basic white came out the best; but I could never get hard crusted bread that I like.
Then a general store opened in Lima, OH and made a variety of great bread at a good cost. I could go by there on my way home from work and get bread. They closed about 5 years ago and I missed the bread.
I found the no-knead bread recipe you did in a cast iron Dutch oven that was popular. I liked it but then our local Wal-Mart started carrying some take home and bake bread that was pretty good. Now they are even carrying their own hard crusted bread. Getting older I keep looking more and more for easy shortcuts instead of always making my own sides and breads.
I picked garlic infused olive oil bread to do today. It turned out good but could have had a little darker crust. The light setting was always best for white bread but maybe because of the olive oil I should use the medium setting.
The bread and butter was great with supper. I could not taste much garlic flavor but my wife said she could. We like the Troyer roll butter and use it for eating. I use regular butter for cooking.
Smokin Don