My bad! My bad! I raise my hand easily enough and let the world know that it was me, not anyone else, who needs to carry all the responsibility and take all the blame for this particular botch-up! Mine! All mine, you can't have it, I claim it. Here we go. I thought making bread for a hobby would be a fun thing to do. I looked into it, I researched. I watched YouTubers make their bread in their bread machines, and I went out and bought one! I even took the time to research that part of it, too.
I didn't want to pour too much money into it if it was going to be a new hobby. First, I wanted to see what was out there, and then get something that was affordable, durable, reliable, etc... and I bought the Elite Gourmet. There's nothing wrong with it - believe me when I tell you, it's me. I made about five loaves in the machine before throwing hissy-fit after hissy-fit when the loaves just didn't turn out the way I thought they should. They weren't tall, fluffy, pristinely tan, or even even -- they were certainly NOT even.
Well, turns out, you can't or shouldn't use all-purpose flour when you make bread in a bread machine. Lesson learned. I bought bread flour, wheat flour, and a few other things I thought would be fun to add to quick breads later, like raisins, walnuts, chia, and so forth. I'll make those breads, yes, I will, but not in a bread machine. I'll continue my little rant, and you can figure it out for yourself.
After three more loaves in the Elite Gourmet bread machine with the same result, even though I had switched flour, made sure my water temperature was between 75 and 90 degrees F, and that my yeast wasn't touching the salt or the water, I sent the Elite Gourmet machine packing back to Amazon! That was not the machine for me. I needed to cook the bread longer, but once it's done, it's done. You can't add more time to it - and if you can, I never figured out how to do it.
I bought a Cuisinart! $130 vs. $70, but it's all about having fun, right? Yes, that's what I told myself. It's all about having a great time making bread -- eating bread. I ended up feeding most of it to the birds, and yes, they did appreciate it. I, on the other hand, do not appreciate having to give away my product after spending time, effort, money, and hope on this (what I thought would be) new hobby -- I made a loaf -- it was bad. Seriously? What was it? What could it be? Oklahoma is only 1330 feet above sea level, so it wasn't elevation -- I hit the internet with my questions. I got answers.
Turns out it was me! It was ME all along. No one else was putting the ingredients into the basket...me. I wasn't using sugar. I was using monk fruit, a natural sweetener that isn't sugar -- it has to be sugar. IT MUST BE SUGAR! The recipes did say you can use honey if you want to, but it needs the carbs for the yeast to feed on and rise -- OK...now, I know, right? So, here I go -- one more loaf -- one more time. I used honey and did everything exactly as instructed, but it still turned out badly. It wasn't AS BAD, but if I had to rank it, I would say 6.5/10, not anywhere near what I needed it or wanted it to be.
Well, that's it. My bread machine days are over, and I'm OK with it. I'll just make quick breads from mixes and call it a day. I really don't mind. If we need a loaf of artisan bread, I'd rather buy a loaf than spend the time I did making worthlessness out of good ingredients. Like I said, the birds didn't mind. They were very happy to see me pitching the chunks of brick-bread out to them - they shared, and pecked at each piece with such enthusiasm. At least I have that.
The Cuisinart goes back on Monday. UPS is closed on Sundays, and this being Valentine's Day, I'm just too wrapped up in my comfy jammies to do anything really productive like taking a bread machine back to UPS to be shipped to Amazon - it can wait. I guess the moral to this story, if there needs to be one, is that I should have (a) read the fine print and (b) not expected so much from a product that basically just does what it does and can't really improve just because my expectations were higher than they needed to be.
Still, it does make me wonder how people on YouTube get their bread to do more than mine did. I used the right ingredients, put them in the basket at the right temperature, in the right order, and I pushed the right buttons -- but, alas, it is not to be. Maybe someone else will read this blog and save themselves a weekend of frustration and $25 worth of ingredients to make bird food. (OK, I'll say this, the dogs liked it too.)
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