Ma's baking lol

As yesterday was a holiday, we went through to town on Thursday for our weekly shop.  Popping into the co-op - they had my bread maker in stock!!! :)  Even more exciting was the fact that the machine states it's a Mellerware Ma Baker III and it only uses 550 watts!!

By the time we got home it was too late to start experimenting, so yesterday, being a holiday, the moment seemed opportune.

Choosing from the recipes in the booklet I picked a loaf of brown bread.

Nervously measuring and filling the baking tin with the ingredients, I hovered, torch in hand (to peek in the view window), for the +/- 3 hours it took to produce.

kymber asked for pics - so here you go :)

Brown bread all snuggled up in it's towels.
I read that storing homemade bread in a kitchen towel
was best, but the kitchen towels I could find locally were
all so ruddy thin.  So I ended up stitching together
two new hand towels - roughly, for I hate sewing lol 

That yummy, freshly baked bread smell only became obvious to me towards the end of the baking cycle, and then we had the 15 - 30 minute wait for the loaf to cool down before we could taste.

Conclusion - topped with plain melted butter it was worth every minute of the wait.  And what crispy toast it made to go with our eggs this morning.

So, with that successful, I decided to go ahead and make the banana loaf.

Banana bread à la Ma Baker.  The recipe didn't ask
for the paddle to be removed, so I left it in.  Thus
the visible gouge out of the bottom of the banana
bread on the left hand side.
Next time I'll remove it before it bakes...

That turned out OK too - but the consistency was more like bread than the cake-like textured banana bread that I'm used to so I was a little disappointed.  So I'm going to try it again, but this time I'm going to add more banana's and cook it on the cake setting - without the paddle in place.

As most of the brown loaf is gone, I'll be making a french loaf tomorrow... :)

Chickpea - you mentioned gluten free bread - yup, it cooks that too.  Here are a couple of the recipes that come with the machine for you to peruse...

  

Chickpea - click on each of the two images to enlarge

Does anyone have a favourite bread recipe from their bread machine?  And, does anyone know if you can cook RMan's favourite rye bread in a bread machine?

P.S.  Only found out this evening - I am a very happy and proud Royalist today.  Welcome to the Princess of Cambridge.  I'm betting on Alexandra, with her second name being Diana.  May she bring much joy to her family.