bread machine love.

Move over Shane McCutcheon, I have a new love.  And it's name.....is bread machine.  
Ok, not really.  I don't love it more than Shane (because I'm in <3 with Shane!)....but I HAVE been baking up a storm with my bread machine, and seem to fall in love with it more each day!
I love that I can throw everything in, press a button, and forget about it until it's done.  I love that I don't have to run my whole oven, worry about getting the temp right to get it to rise, or dirty a bunch of bowls and my counter-top to make dough.  I love that I can have any type of fresh baked bread that I want without the risk of bakery contamination with nut containing products, or weird chemicals I can't pronounce (or can pronounce and KNOW are bad for me...corn syrup anyone?).  I still need to venture out away from the white flour a little, but for now I'm thrilled that my bread consists of REAL ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, yeast....not by products or preservatives.  AND it's cheap!  My frugal side is THRILLED that my breadsticks, rolls, pizza dough, and, of course, bread, are made with mere pennies worth of ingredients, and taste BETTER than their store bought counterpart!
This whole bread machine love is probably not so good for my waistline, but my ultimate comfort food is hot, fresh bread, so....it's the little things in life, right? ;)


This morning I actually used my bread machine for both breakfast AND lunch!  First, I made a pumpkin raisin quick bread (with the remainder of the pumpkin from the muffins), using a recipe from Betty Crocker.

I subbed raisins for the nuts (obviously....), and also took a suggestion from the comments to use brown sugar rather than white...it was almost a little TOO moist though, next time I'll just use white.

After that was done I turned around, washed the pan, and started dough for dinner rolls (lunch rolls?).

fluffy goodness <3

For a long time after getting my bread machine I was so intimidated by the dough cycle...."What do you mean I have to take it out and bake it?!"  But it really is so much easier than doing it all by hand!  It takes an hour and a half, but it does all of the kneading, mixing, and warm rising for you.  Depending on the recipe, all you do is take out the dough, put it on a baking sheet, cover it for a half hour or so, and then bake it.  SO simple!  And everything has turned out really yummy that I've made. 

hot roll with roasted root veggies and quinoa....yum!