Will it Bread Machine? Rich bread with eggs and milk

I'll confess. I use my bread machine a lot more than most folks would imagine.

As much as I love the process of making bread, I don't always have time, and there are days when there are so many other things going on in the kitchen that there's just no way to find an unused swath of kitchen counter space to make the process pleasant.

I have a few basic recipes that I know will work, and I even wrote some recipes a bread machine (this Gourmia bread machine), so I'm comfortable with creating recipes. But the one thing I learned from my long association with bread machines is that not every traditional bread recipe will work in a bread machine.

But sometimes I throw caution to the wind, like with this recipe from a cookbook. Once again I'm making recipes from a cookbook that's being passed around in a cookbook group I belong to. The book is Small Victories by Julia Turshen.


The recipe, as written was for raspberry jam buns, but the last thing I needed was a batch of sweet buns. There were variations (called spin-offs in the book) for cinnamon rolls, garlic buns, herb goat cheese buns, monkey bread, salami or prosciutto bread, and buttery dinner rolls.

I considered making the dinner rolls, but still didn't want to fuss that much, so I decided to just toss all the ingredients in the machine and let 'er rip. I didn't warm the milk, as the instructions said, and the butter was straight from the refrigerator rather than at room temperature. It all went in, as is.

I used Red Star Platinum Yeast rather than regular active dry, but otherwise I used all the ingredients suggested. If you're using a different brand of active dry yeast than Red Star, you might need to soften the yeast in liquid before kneading since some of the active dry yeasts from other brands have a larger granule size that won't dissolve if it's put directly into the dough. If you use Platinum, Red Star Active Dry or any rapid or bread machine yeast, you don't need to soften the yeast before proceeding.

Bread Machine Egg and Milk Loaf
Inspired by Small Victories by Julia Turshen

3/4 cup whole milk
2 1/4 teaspoons Red Star Platinum Yeast*
2 eggs
3 1/4 cups (390 grams) all purpose flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon kosher salt (I suggest 1 1/4 teaspoons)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter

Toss it all in the bread machine. I'd suggest cutting the butter into at least 4 pieces so it kneads into the dough easier. If you don't have Platinum yeast, that's fine - just use whatever yeast you like to use in your bread machine.

I used the basic bread setting, 2 1/2 pound loaf, and a medium crust. When I make this again, I'll use a light crust setting so the crust doesn't get quite as dark on the bottom and sides. It wasn't bad, and it wasn't burned, but is was a little darker and thicker that it needed to be.

And that's it. Set the machine, wait until it's done, and remove the loaf when it's done.

Thanksgiving Bread Pudding - now with cranberries!

I love stuffing. I've even made bread that tastes like stuffing - which is pretty amazing for a turkey sandwich.

But that's not the same as actual stuffing. I grew up eating stuffing that was cooked inside a turkey. Lately, though, I've been cutting the turkey up and cooking the pieces separately. A few times, I've smoked the breast while cooking the dark meat in the oven.

But ... that meant I had to find a different way of cooking the stuffing. I tried a lot of variations of cooking stuffing in a casserole dish - which I guess means it's dressing - and they were all fine. But then I had the brilliant idea of making a stuffing flavored bread pudding. And it was amazing.

This year, I decided I wanted an early Thanksgiving, so I bought and cooked a small turkey breast. I enjoyed my sandwiches, but then I started thinking about stuffing. Then, I went to an event sponsored by Sprouts Farmers Market and they tossed a can of cranberry sauce into the goodie bag.

And I had a great idea. A stuffing bread pudding studded with chunks of turkey, with a layer of cranberry sauce on the bottom. It was like Thanksgiving in one bite.

This would be a great lunch or brunch meal, or a perfect dinner item for folks who like the stuffing better than anything else. You could certainly use leftover cooked turkey for this.

Or, if you're not the one who hosted the holiday and you have no turkey, you could cook a small turkey breast, or you could get some turkey deli meat. Just ask for the turkey to be cut into 1/2-inch slices so you can cut it into cubes.

This would also be good with chicken instead of turkey.

Thanksgiving Bread Pudding with Cranberry Sauce

4 tablespoons butter
3 ribs of celery, diced
1 medium onion, diced
1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
1 teaspoon rubbed sage
Salt and pepper, to taste
4-6 cups cubed stale bread
2 cups cubed turkey
1 can cranberry sauce
8 eggs (more, if needed)
1 cup milk (more, if needed)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and have an 8- or 9-inch baking dish standing by.

Heat the butter in a saute pan. Add the celery and onions and cook until it begins to soften. Add the poultry seasoning, sage, salt, and pepper. Continue cooking, stirring as needed, until the vegetables are cooked through. Taste for seasoning. This should be well seasoned, since it will be combined with a lot of bread and eggs.

Put the bread in a large bowl. Add the cooked vegetables and turkey. Toss to combine. You don't want to mash or tear the bread any further - just mix it together.

Spread the cranberry sauce evenly on the bottom of the baking dish. Add the bread cube mixture to the baking dish.

Beat the milk and eggs until well combined. Pour this over the bread in the baking dish. The amount of liquid the bread will absorb depends on the bread, and how dry it is. You want to make sure all the bread is moist, and that there is liquid surrounding the bread. It's fine if there are bread cubes sticking up above the liquid a little but there should be visible liquid.

Here it is, before it went into the oven.

If the bread isn't thoroughly moist, and there's not enough liquid, beat some more eggs with milk and add it as needed. If you need just a small amount of liquid, you can just add extra milk.

Bake at 350 degrees until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. It's fine if it's wet, but it shouldn't be coated with egg.

Serve hot or at room temperature. This is also good cold, if you happen to like cold stuffing.

The Sprouts event was held at the National Cattleman’s Beef Association, and had absolutely nothing to do with turkey - we learned about cooking beef. But yeah, I used their cranberry sauce in this recipe and they provided a gift card to allow me to shop for anything I liked.

Hummus Bread - Lemon and Pepper

A while back, I visited Hope Hummus and saw how they made hummus. It's a small company, and local. That's something I love. At that visit, I got samples of their hummus and their guacamole. Which I ate. Because it was good.

Recently, I got some coupons for their products, and went hunting for the guacamole. Yeah, I can make guac, but avocados are difficult. Usually they're not quite ripe at the store, so they need to sit around for a while. They're ripe for a couple seconds, then they're overripe.

Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it seems like you have to use the avocados when they're ready for you, rather than having avocados on hand for when you need them.

But ... I couldn't find the guacamole, and the coupons were burning a hole in my wallet, so I bought hummus. Hey, I like hummus, too.

And then I starting thinking about it. Scooping hummus with a pita chip is great, but I wanted to cook with it. The next thing I knew, I was planning on putting in into bread. I knew it would work. I've used alternative flours, potatoes and potato flakes, peanut butter ... so hummus wasn't a stretch.

I decided to use the hummus flavored with lemon and pepper. It added a pretty yellow color to the bread, and gave it a nice, soft texture. But pretty much any flavor hummus you have should be fine. The Sriracha one might be interesting.

I decided to make it in my bread machine, but of course you can knead by hand or machine and then form and bake in an oven.

Lemon and Pepper Hummus Bread

1 cup water
2 1/4 teaspoons Red Star active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
13 1/2 ounces (3 cups) bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4  cup Hope Lemon Pepper Hummus

Add all the ingredients to your bread machine and press buttons as appropriate (hey, I don't know what options your machine has, but a basic loaf with a medium crust is what I'd suggest.)

When the bread is baked, remove it from the machine, remove from the pan, and let cool on a rack until it's completely cooled before slicing or storing.

Tomato Rolls with a Herb and Cream Cheese Swirl

Let's just get this out there. I love tomato powder. I use it sort of like tomato paste or tomato sauce, but it's more concentrated, and it doesn't add extra liquid, so it's easy to work with.

So, when my buddies at 37 Cooks hooked up with The Spice House and we could pick anything we wanted, of course I wanted the tomato powder. Along with a few other things.

Well, actually a lot of things. I stocked up on things I use all the time and I also picked up a few new things to try, like the ancho-coffee rub and the porcini salt.

Even before the tomato powder arrived, I knew I wanted to use in in bread, somehow. I've made breads before with tomato powder and cheddar cheese, with tomato powder and olives, and I've made flatbreads with bits of sundried tomatoes.

I even made rolls with a swirl of tomato bread along with white bread.

After I pondered a while, I decided on tomato swirl rolls, and I decided that the swirl would be filled with cream cheese and the Sunny Greek seasoning that I also got from The Spice House.

And then I got to work.

I don't know what it is about swirl rolls, but I love making them, no matter if they're sweet or savory. They're just fun.

And the rolls are pretty much never identical, which I also like. It's not ideal if you're baking for a bakery, but I like the idea that I can have a small roll if that's what I want, or a larger roll. Or one with more or less filling. Because that's how I am. Sort of random and chaotic.

Tomato Rolls with a Herbed Cream Cheese Swirl

For the filling:
8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 tablespoon Spice House Sunny Greek seasoning

For the dough:
1 1/2 cups water
2 1/4 tablespoons Red Star active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
13 1/2 ounces bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons tomato flour
1/2 cup potato flakes (instant mashed potatoes)

To make the filling:
Combine the cream cheese and herbs in a small bowl and mix until well combined. Set aside at room temperature until needed.

To make the dough:
Combine all of the ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer and knead until the dough is smooth, shiny, and elastic. Cover the bowl and set aside until the dough doubles in size, about an hour.

When the dough has risen, flour your work surface and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9x13 baking pan with baking spray.

Turn out the dough and roll it into a rectangle about 11 x 16 inches. With one of the long sides of the dough facing you. spread the filling over the top of the dough, leaving about an inch uncovered on the far side. It can be easier to spread the filling with your fingertips rather than using a spatula.

Roll the dough up, jellyroll-style, and not too tight, and seal the seam when you reach the far end.

If the roll is very uneven, roll and nudge is so it's a fairly even thickness, then cut the roll into 12 even pieces. Place the pieces, with one of the cut sides up, in the baking pan.

Cover the pan and set aside until the dough has doubles, about 30 minutes.

Bake at 350 degrees until lightly browned on top - the sides tend to brown more than the top. Remove the pan from the oven and turn the buns out to cool on a rack.

I received products to work with from The Spice House through 37 Cooks.

Bread Machine Loaf with Farro

Farro, not pharoah. It's a grain, not an ancient ruler.

Yes, yes, yes, I'm still grinding different grains in my new grain mill. I just can't stop. I ordered MORE grains. But I bought the farro at the grocery store in the section where they sell rice and beans and quinoa. This stuff was meant for cooking as-is. Like you'd cook barley or rice.

But that doesn't mean you can't use it as flour.

Bwaaa haaa ha!

Since it's still a bit warm here, I tossed it into my bread machine. I know some people think a machine is cheating, but I cheat anyway, since most of the time I use my stand mixer or my food processor to knead my dough.

And it's not like a build a fire outside and bake the bread in a handmade brick oven. I use a machine - my oven - to bake the bread.

Yeah, the bread machine is easier and the bread isn't hand-formed into an interesting shape, and then slashed for dramatic effect (and better rising).

The resulting loaf is rectangular and has a hole in the bottom where the paddle gets baked into the dough. But it's good for sandwiches and toast and ... I don't have to stop what I'm doing when the dough needs my attention. I chuck all the ingredients into the machine, push buttons, and let the magic happen. And then I get some work done.

Trust me, there will be more artisan-like loaves again here. Just not today, mkay?

Bread Machine Loaf with Farro Flour

1 cup water
1 egg
1 tablespoon sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons Red Star active dry yeast (or any bread machine or instant yeast)
4 ounces farro flour (I used fresh-ground)
9 ounces bread flour
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt

Put all the ingredients into your bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer (some suggest that liquids go first, some suggest dry ingredients firs) and press the appropriate buttons.

When the bread is done, remove it from the machine and let it cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Whole Wheat Focaccia with Olives, Cheese, and Rosemary

This bread actually started out as an idea for a sandwich. Well, it started with salad, but then it quickly turned into a Salad Nicoise sandwich with tuna and kalamata olives.

I decided that foccacia would be the perfect vehicle for my sandwich, and I decided to embed the olives in the bread. I mean, why not?

The bread was also a great way to use a new flavored olive oil I got from a company called Pasolivo. They have a lot of flavored oils, but the one they sent me was a rosemary oil. I adore rosemary, but it can be kind of strong, so I was fairly conservative with it here - I just used it for drizzling on top of the bread. The rosemary flavor isn't super-strong, but that's exactly what I wanted - a hint of rosemary that would compliment the olives and the final sandwich, without overpowering.

If you're using this bread as a stand-alone and you want more rosemary flavor, you could drizzle more oil on right after baking, or substitute rosemary olive oil for the regular olive oil in the dough. Or, even more fun, you could use the rosemary olive oil as a dipping oil for the bread.

Because I'm still in love with my new grain mill, I ground my own whole wheat flour for this. If you don't have a grain mill, of course you can buy flour. It's what most folks do, right? But ... if you want a grain mill ... well, check out this post.

Whole Wheat Focaccia with Olives, Cheese, and Rosemary

4 1/2 ounces (1 cup) bread flour
4 1/2 ounces (1 cup) whole wheat flour (I used freshly ground flour)
1/2 cup (about 3 ounces) semolina flour
2 1/4 teaspoons Red Star* active dry yeast
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water (or more, as needed)
2 tablespoons olive oil (divided)
1 tablespoon Pasolivo rosemary-flavored olive oil
1/2 cup pitted and halved Kalamata olives
1/4 to 1/2 shredded mozzarella cheese

Combine the bread flour, whole wheat flour, semolina flour, yeast, cheddar cheese, sugar, salt, water, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil in the bowl of your stand mixer. Mix slowly with the dough hook until it comes together. The dough should be soft and sticky at this point. If it's not soft, and is dense instead, add more water as needed.

I've found that freshly-ground flour tends to require less water, so if you're using store-bought whole wheat flour, you're likely to need another 1/4 cup of water, or possibly a little more.

Increase the speed to medium and continue kneading until the dough is elastic.

Cover the bowl and set aside until doubled in size, about an hour.

When the dough has risen drizzle the remaining tablespoon of olive oil into a quarter-sheet baking pan. Turn the dough out onto the pan and stretch, poke, and cajole the dough to fit the pan. Heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Cover the pan (another quarter-sheet pan turned upside-down makes a great lid) and set aside for 30 minutes.

Drizzle the rosemary olive oil onto the dough. Use your fingertips to dimple the top of the dough randomly. Top the dough with the kalamata olives, spreading them evenly over the dough. Push the olives into the dough. Scatter the mozzarella cheese over the top of the dough. If you want more cheese, I wouldn't say no. But remember - it's not pizza.

Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, turning the pan around halfway through the baking time if your oven tends to bake unevenly.

Let the focaccia cool in the pan for a few minutes before turning out onto a rack to cool completely.

Remember that sandwich?

I cut a piece of the focaccia in half and added mayonnaise, tomato, and tuna. It was really good.

*If you use a brand other than Red Star, let it soften in the water before adding the other ingredients.

I received the Pasolivo Rosemary Olive Oil as a sample for review. I decided to use it in a recipe, instead.

White Lily White Grape Flour Bread Machine Loaf (and Degustabox)

So, last month I did a review of a Degustabox box. It's a delivery service that sends an assortment of different food products every month.

It's not themed, so you won't get stuck with a box full of items based on a theme you don't happen to like. Some products are things you might find soon in your grocery store and others are a more local or regional.

The item that immediately got my attention was the White Lily All Purpose and White Grape Seed flour. And of course the first thing I thought of was ... bread.

I mean, it's usually the first thing I think of. And it's a really good way to taste the nuances of a flour since there aren't other flavors competing. Bread isn't sweetened like cake or cookies and it doesn't have vanilla or chocolate or nuts or other flavor-forward ingredients.

Well, okay, it could have those things.

But when I'm testing a flour in bread, I like to leave it fairly plain. I just used the basics for this recipe: the White Lily flour, bread flour, water, yeast, and a little bit of sugar, salt, and olive oil. Nothing fancy.

And since it was a warm day, I used my bread machine. Yes, me, the person who wrote a book about bread baking, used the bread machine. Again. It's summer, it's hot, and the bread machine doesn't heat up the house very much.

The bread was interesting. Although the flour was a cream color, the bread had a purple-ish cast to it.

Not the sort of purple where you'd gasp at the weirdness of it, but the sort of purple where you look at it sideways and try to decide if your eyes are playing tricks or if there's something odd about the lighting. It looked a little like a light rye, but with that purple nuance.

The bread didn't have a distinctive flavor, but it wasn't plain bread, either. It was a little richer and deeper, perhaps. I think I'd like to try this flour in cupcakes and see what it's like. For now, I have bread for sandwiches.

White Lily White Grape Flour Bread Machine Loaf

1 cup water
2 1/4 teaspoons Red Star active dry yeast (or bread machine yeast)
1 tablespoon sugar
4 1/2 ounces White Lily White Grape flour
7 ounces bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil

Put all the ingredients in your bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer (some suggest water first, other suggest water last, for example.)

Press appropriate buttons to knead and bake bread.

When the bread is done, remove the bread from the machine and let it cool completely on a rack before slicing.

What's in this month's Degustabox:

Besides the White Lily White Grape flour, there was:

Sir Kensington's Chipotle Mayonnaise
This isn't your regular mayonnaise - it's got chipotle peppers, tomato paste, smoked paprika, and spices. Great on any burger, or a spicy pasta salad, or a chicken salad. Or a marinade. Or deviled eggs. I've got a recipe in mind, so we'll see if it works.

Oregon Chai Tea Latte powdered mix
I've bought this before, and it's pretty darned good . You just add hot water and stir. I also like it chilled - you need to mix it with hot water first, then add ice to chill it down. I'm thinking about using a couple packets to make a chai-flavored ice cream, if I don't manage to drink it all first. Like I said, it's pretty good.

Goetze's Mini Cow Tails candy
I've never had these before, but they remind me of another candy I remember from when I was a kid. These are a nice treat, with caramel and a creamy center. They're the perfect size. They're disappearing fast. There won't be a recipe. Hah!

Loacker Rose of the Dolomites chocolate candies
If you like hazelnut and chocolate, you have to try these. There are little crunchy bits, as well. These are freaking amazing.

Vermont uncured turkey sticks and cracked pepper beef and pork sticks
I'm a huge fan of sausages like summer sausage, hard salami, and similar sausages. These are in that family, They're the perfect snack when I get home and I'm hungry and I need just a little something to tide me over until I have lunch or dinner. The ones I got to sample are 1/2-ounce sticks, but it seems like the ones they sell are 1-ounce, or there are larger 6-ounce sausages that you'd slice.

Popchips Potato Ridges with Cheddar and Sour Cream
I'd seen these in the store, but hadn't gotten around to buying them yet. These are baked, not fried, and have no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. But that's not the important part, right? They taste good. The texture is interesting. They're sort of puffy, but also nice and crunchy. Great for dipping. I'm going to hunt up some other flavors next time I go to the store.

Honey Bunches of Oats with strawberries
I haven't opened this yet - I had a few other cereal boxes open, so I didn't want to have another one opened at the same time. I seldom eat cereal with milk - I either snack on it as-is, or I use it in cooking. This is a new one for me, but I've used plain Honey Bunches of Oats as a coating for chicken.

ALO Allure juice with Mangosteen and Mango with aloe juice
I haven't tried this yet, because it seems like the perfect drink when I need hydration. It's going to hide in the fridge for a while. Interesting thing is that on the side of the bottle is a QR code that leads to some music. That's different. Check it out if you buy some. I have no idea if all the QR codes are different, or if they all lead to the same song.

Goya Maria Cookies
You need to read about these on Buzzfeed. That says more than than I ever could.

That's a pretty impressive lineup of products, right? The box also included recipes, a sheet that showed the products and retail pricing so you know what you'll pay for the goodies when you go to the store (I added it up, and it was $34.53, but they'll cost a bit more if you can't find them locally and have to order online). And, for fun, there's instructions for how to fold an origami swan, and a little quiz.

I have a free subscription to Degustabox.You can get your first box for just $9.99 with the code R7TXK.

Bread Machine Freshly-Ground Whole Wheat Bread

As promised, I'm working on more recipes using freshly ground wheat. This time around, I used a hard red wheat that I bought on Amazon.

Actually, I was looking for soft wheat, which I'll be using for biscuits or maybe cake ... but then I saw a 10-pound 2-pack of soft white wheat and hard red wheat from Palouse and decided to get that.

I didn't need biscuits right away, even though I was anxious to try that soft wheat, but I needed a quick loaf of bread. So I decided to open the red wheat and give it a try. It's not actually red, but it's a darker color than the white wheat - which isn't white. It's more of a tan color. Just in case you were curious.

Anyway, I ground some red wheat to make the bread. As usual, I added some bread flour, because that's how I like to make it. And then it went into the bread machine, because I was being lazy.

Okay, I was also a little curious how my freshly-ground wheat flour would behave in the bread machine.

Turns out, the bread worked out just fine. Interesting thing, though, was that I measured a cup of wheat berries rather than weighing. Then I ground it.

Right off the bat, I saw that I had a lot more than a cup of flour. I weighed 5 ounces of flour for this recipe and had a bit over 2 ounces left. So, a cup of wheat berries fluffed up to make a little over 1 1/2 cups of flour.

That's why it's really important to weigh flour an not rely on volumes. And particularly not the volume of wheat berries versus the volume of flour.

Of course, if I had weighed the berries and then ground them, I wouldn't have even thought about the fluffing of the flour. Another interesting lesson about flour learned. That's what I love about cooking. There's always something new.

Bread Machine Freshly-Ground Whole Wheat Bread

1 cup water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon Red Star active dry yeast
5 ounces freshly ground red wheat flour
7 ounces bread flour (I use King Arthur)
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter

Put it all in your bread machine. Press buttons. You know how you bread machine works. Beep. Boop. Beep.

When the bread is done, remove it from the bread machine and let it cool completely on a rack before slicing.

Note: You certainly can use other types of yeast, but I prefer Red Star Active Dry for most things. If you use a different brand of active dry, you'll probably need to let it soften in the water for a short while before mixing. Red Star's active dry has a very small pellet size, so it doesn't need to be softened first. You can also use bread machine yeast or instant yeast.

Check out my first post about freshly ground flour here.

This is NOT a sponsored. post. I got the grain mill for use in my previous post (but my obligation with them is over now), but I bought the wheat berries with my own cash. Okay, Amazon takes credit cards. But still. My money.