Mmmm, the smell of freshly baked bread, is there any better smell? Of course there is newly mown grass, brewing coffee, the sea.... I could go on, but fresh bread is definitely up there near the top.
Here is my easily accomplished effort at making a loaf of what's called half and half these days - white flour and wholemeal - A few other ingredients including salt, sugar and water, with some left-over-from-Christmas dried cranberries as a filling. Easily accomplished as I just used my trusty old bread maker. Although it tastes better and the texture is also better when mixed by hand and kneaded for 10 minutes, leaving it for two hours in a cool area and then again for half an hour, the bread maker gets used more often, precisely due to the steps just mentioned.
The flour being weighed out, good strong white flour and a decent wholemeal. The choice of flour does make a difference, organic is preferable, and stoneground. I sometimes mix up the flours to cut costs.
The Cranberries (one of daughter#2's favourite groups has this name - darn it, wish I hadn't remembered that, now I have "zombie zombie" going through my mind).
Being cooked in my Panasonic SD-253. This one is widely held to be one of the best. I've only used this one but people who have tried different makes and are able to compare generally rate this as very good. I bought it on the recommendation of friends and they were right, it is very good. I remember texting one of my friends whilst choosing it in the shop to check I was getting the right one. Texts are so useful.
The finished loaf, you can't see the colour properly and there aren't as many cranberries in the slice photographed but it is very nice, ready to be eaten with a slither of olive paste as an interesting crossover of flavours. Wish you had smell-o-vision.
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