Before my toddler was born, I used to bake bread using a bread machine. I enjoyed it, and experimented with adding onion and sunflower seeds and stuff.
Then I had my first child, and I simply forgot. So many things to do and remember, baking my own bread wasn’t high on the list.
Until a few months ago, when I had the urge to bake my own bread again, and I took my bread maker out of the cupboard (well, my husband did 🙂 ). I looked around the internet and tried to find a good recipe.
Whole loaves of bread never really worked for me in the bread machine. What I liked was to make the dough in the bread machine and bake rolls/challah in the oven. So I tried this recipe and the results were absolutely awesome!!
I also tried substituting up to 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour (I intended to start with less, but I ran out of white flour) and the results were still great!
I was less successful in finding a 100% whole wheat recipe, though. I tried this recipe , without the dry milk. When trying to make a loaf in the bread machine, the bread fell so the bread was very dense and heavy. And when I tried to make rolls from the same dough, the rolls were also pretty dense. I found them tasty, but my husband prefered the white or mixed because they come out really light. I’m going to try the first recipe with 100% whole wheat flour and see how it turns out.
The problem with loaves in the bread machine is that it doesn’t take into account the weather. The bread machine doesn’t look at the dough and think “hmm, that needs another 10 minutes of rising”. It just switches to bake mode and that’s it. When baking rolls, you can look and decide whether it goes in the oven now or in another 10 minutes, and I think that makes the difference. That and the fact that I suspect that 4 cups of flour might simply be too much for my bread machine.
In any case, rolls go better at my house than sliced bread. Everyone prefers it (including me, frankly). So this was definitely successful.
We pretty much stopped buying bread. I have sliced bread in my freezer in case I need it, but that’s it. I don’t know how much money we saved, because we buy humongous amounts of flour (whole and white). My husband bought a huge package of dry active yeast for a ridiculously small amount, so that’s not where the money goes. Also, I don’t calculate electricity and stuff. But we’re probably saving on the order of 20 NIS per week on challot alone.
Of course, we’re also eating a lot more bread now. The problem with freshly baked rolls is that you blink and they’re gone! Here is the “before” image (I added the larger roll a few minutes later. That’s our Challa for guests).
 
And here is the same place 15 minutes later:
Need I say more?
Bon Apetit!
Leftover Recipes 