Carb-free diets be damned, I love bread. The smell of it baking, the taste of it warm with butter still melting in. A well made sandwich is a work of art, but on home baked bread it’s enough to make Michelangelo cry.
So now that we’re finally (mostly) settled into our new house, we broke out the bread maker and treated ourselves to a fresh loaf. It’s been a little while since we’ve done any fresh bread other than popovers (check out our gruyère and cracked pepper or jalapeño and cheddar popover recipes), so we started out easy with the basic white loaf with a little bit extra and made this pesto bread recipe with our bread maker.
ingredients:
Makes one small loaf (about 1 pound)
Water, 80°–90°F – 3⁄4 cup
Olive oil, extra virgin – 1 tablespoon
Pesto – 3 tablespoons
Sea salt – 1⁄2 teaspoon
Bread flour – 21⁄4 cups
Granulated sugar – 1 teaspoon
Yeast, active dry, instant or bread machine – 11⁄2 teaspoons
directions:
Add the ingredients in the order listed and set your bread machine for small white loaf (NOT rapid). I wish I had followed the rapid recipe, because waiting the nearly three hours for this to mix and bake was rough. I dreamt of fresh bread for breakfast, but ended up with it for lunch. Next time, I think I’ll add the ingredients the night before and set the times so I can wake to fresh bread… Share your favorite bread machine recipe links in the comments!
