Bread Baker, Bread Baker, Make Me Some Bread!

So do you see this????

I have had this breadmachine for almost 4 years. I received it as a Christmas gift almost 4 years ago. I gift that I asked for. I bought all the ingredients and made bread for Christmas dinner.

When the timer beeped I went to get the bread out and it was hard as a rock. Disappointed (and pissed off), I threw the bread out and stuck the bread machine in the basement where it has sat since that time.

On the 4th of July my husband and I were unpacking some boxes in the basement when I came across the bread machine and the manual. Of course I went all like "OOOOOOOHHHHHHHH my bread machine!" Totally forgetting about my last debacle with making bread.

Then yesterday when I took the boys to Wegmans I ran down the baking aisle and saw on display this...

Of course, knowing I did not have the ingredients to make homemade bread I bought the box swearing at how I knew it was going to fail because the machine is stupid, and hates me and why can't I learn to make bread the normal way.

Okay, when I say the normal way I am thinking back to when I was in the 3rd grade and our teacher Mrs. Tantillo did a theme around some book where Mrs. Hen wants to make the bread and she asks who wants to help and no one does so she Cracks The Wheat, and Grinds the Flour and Kneads The Bread and etc etc. At the very end everyone wants to eat the bread though and Mrs. Hen won't let them because her chicken ass did all the work!

Well anyway, I remember after that book Mrs. Tantillo showed us how to make real, homemade bread that we kneaded with our own hands. Which now looking back kind of grosses me out because who wants 30 sets of 3rd grader hands in their bread?

But I digress...

Back to trying to make my bread again in my machine.

I followed the instructions, and 3 hours later when I came home from having the boys haircut my house smelled so wonderful! And I had a fresh, homemade, perfect loaf of bread!

I recommend it to anyone with a bread machine and no time. (The box was $2.49 compared to the cost of buying bread flour, yeast, dry milk etc.)