Linda Rehberg - Bread Machine Magic

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy. Contents To our mothers, Estelle and Dulcinea, who were with us in spirit every step of the way Acknowledgments This book could not have been written without the assistance of Cheri Cotton Ginsberg, our associate baker and taster. Shes allergic to yeast, so her efforts went far beyond what was asked of her.

Cheri, you are incredible! Putting our ideas on paper was made possible through the computer knowledge and invaluable assistance of Debbie and Rick Carlson. It was such a relief knowing you were only a phone call away! Mega-thanks to you both. We are indebted to family members who offered their support and many good friends who tasted and critiqued each loaf we made, often several times over until we got it right! Thank you, Madelyn and Bob Robenhymer, Gary and Rita Gottshalk, Dave and Terri Brown, Sue and Steve Garfin, Gil and Carolyn Andrade, DeDe and Shareen Carlson, Susan Schelkun, Bill and Elise Mungovan, Elliot and Sara, Michael, Eric and Janey, Anita, Morris and Evelyn Schaffran, the wonderfully supportive ladies from the North Clairemont Library, the great cooks and connoisseurs of the Wrangler Square Dance Club, the fantastic faculty and staff of Poway High School, the ever-hungry Cosmo Club regulars, the hardworking real estate agents in the Clairemont Coldwell Banker office, coworkers at Smokenders, who had to put up with our incessant bread discussions, and our favorite tester, Briscoe, the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier. Were grateful to Lou Ramsey, Max Hagan, and Janet Swanson for their special contributions to this book. By the way, Lynn Dominguez, you started it all! Most of all we wish to thank some very special friends: Margaret Smith, Lorraine Flora, and Irene Billingsleya team of coworkers that make each workday a delight. Your enthusiastic support, highly valued opinions, and marvelous senses of humor were an integral part of this project.

Our heartfelt appreciation to Marilyn Lauer, who cheered us on from the sidelines. Now that this book is done, Marilyn, we hope youll bake more than one type of bread in your machine! Shayna (our in-house editor), you were a great help. Even though youre so much smarter than your mom, your gentle spirit prevented you from flaunting it. Thanks, kiddo. We wish to acknowledge Dr. Nancy Gamble and Lucy Silvay Peluso, both authors, psychologists, and friends who have set an inspiring example through their own successes.

We extend additional expressions of gratitude to two men who helped us through the transition from wishful thinking to reality: Lloyd Billingsley, who gave us sound advice and guidance and a glimpse of the dedication it takes to write full time, and Frank Phillips, a legal consultant extraordinairethere should be more attorneys like him! Bread Machine Magic would not be a reality without our editor, Barbara Anderson. Her warmth, wit, and superb editing skills contributed greatly to the fulfillment of our dream. When Barbara retired, we were blessed once again with another very caring and competent editorMarian Lizzi. Marian has patiently seen us through many panicky phone calls and e-mails over the years, and with much good humor, has been our guide through the intricacies of publishing and promoting a cookbook. Our husbands, Dennis and Jim, deserve applause. They never flinched as we brought home one bread machine after another.

They endured inaccessible phone lines and computers, numerous courier runs on their way home from work, nonexistent wives at several social events, and freezers crammed full of frozen breads and rolls instead of their marinated steaks. Pack up the RVs, guys; the book is finally done and its time to go play! Introduction Welcome to the world of bread baking made easy! With an automatic bread machine and 5 minutes of your time, you can create an almost endless variety of delicious, healthful loaves to please your family or shower on friends. You can skip the rolled-up sleeves, clouds of flour, and sticky countertops and go right to the final producta beautiful, aromatic, incredible-tasting loaf of homemade bread. The 4 or 5 hours once spent tending a rising loaf of bread can now be programmed into the bread machine to suit our busy schedules. Will you be gone all day? No problem just program your machine to bake that loaf 8 hours from now as you walk through the door. Did you forget to bake a bread for dinner? Nowadays, there are machines that bake breads in 1 hour about the time it would take you to kick off your shoes, change clothes, and rustle up a meal for the family.

But if you want to know the nicest bonus of all, its waking up any given morning to the delectable, heady aroma of freshly baked bread. Its as though little elves had been busy during the night to leave you a special treat. How can any day go wrong when it starts like that? Because freshly baked homemade bread has such a wonderful taste and texture, its the perfect gift when you want to say a simple thank you or when youre invited for dinner and dont know what to bring. Its a gift thats always appreciated. We know a real estate agent who bakes a loaf whenever she meets clients for a listing. Its also a delightful way to greet new neighbors.

When you have company over, the bread machine creates a special perfume of its own. Nothing says come on in faster than the smell of baking bread. You probably already own a bread machine and are well aware of its many advantages. But, chances are, you picked up this book for the very same reason we were motivated to write it. For all their advantages, most machines come with just a few rather uninspired recipes. Thats a major disappointment for those of us who have grand visions of creating an endless variety of healthful whole-grain breads, unusual fruit and vegetable breads, delicious white breads for sandwiches, European ryes and pumpernickels, luscious sweet rolls and coffee cakesmaybe even a sourdough bread if it isnt too complicated.

With those breads in mind, we tossed out the recipe booklets and set out to create our own masterpieces. What we created, however, were a lot of disasters! Wed never seen so many ugly loaves of bread! How discouraging to discover that blue ribbon breads arent easy to produce, at least for a novice. We retrieved the recipe booklets and started again from scratch, but we had many questions that went beyond the basic instructions in our bread machine booklets. Since bread machines were still a novelty at that time, and there were no bread machine cookbooks on the market, it was necessary to back up and do a great deal of research on bread-baking techniques to find the answers to all of our questions. Weve compiled much of that knowledge and our experiences in the chapter Tips for Baking the Perfect Loaf. Once we had answers, our next challenge was to adapt all that we had learned to the unique requirements of each of the leading brands of bread machines.

That could only be accomplished by purchasing the machines and testing more than one thousand loaves of bread! Its no wonder this book was more than two years in the making! The most trying part of the process was achieving a picture-perfect loaf in several of the machines but seeing it sink in one or two of the others. Our goal was to produce recipes that made consistently acceptable loaves in all the bread machines. We finally realized it was necessary to list the liquid ingredients with an eighth-cup range in order to overcome the idiosyncrasies of each machine. Also, rather than sacrifice a good recipe because one or two of the test loaves failed to meet our standards for height or appearance, we simply made a notation at the beginning of those particular recipes. As you can imagine, all those loaves of bread needed sampling, too. We enlisted the aid of many valued, opinionated tasters: spouses, children, friends, coworkers, relatives, neighbors, even Loiss dog, Briscoe! Pavlov would have been proud of him.