A few weeks ago we bought a cheap breadmaking machine.
It’s brilliant.
Chuck in a bunch of ingredients, press a couple of buttons, and you can wake up in the morning to a freshly baked loaf!
As with any new device, there has been a certain amount of trial and error. The first couple of loaves sank rather a lot at the top, so you can imagine my excitement when I opened the machine to discover this beauty! Not only had it risen right to the top of the pan, it had overflowed and stuck itself to the lid of the machine. Oops.
Still, it came away easily enough, and tasted pretty good as well. This is a white loaf made with added cheese. Unfortunately, what you can’t tell from this picture is that almost the top half of the loaf is completely hollow!
We’ve now taken to using the “sandwich” setting on the machine, which produces a lovely dense loaf with hardly any crust. This makes it nice and easy to slice, and makes a lovely neat square sandwich. Next time I might be a bit more adventurous and buy a bag of wholemeal flour. Apparently this necessitates pushing a different button on the machine, but I think I’ll probably manage.