Who doesn't like the smell of bread baking? Most people find it a pleasant aroma whether it's in a fine artisan bakery or in their own home.
To make bread the ingredients must be measured out accurately, or in some instances a pre-packaged mix can be relied on. The ingredients must be mixed properly and allowed to set in a warm place. The dough is allowed to rise at least once, the air bubbles squeezed out in between rises. Dough is then shaped into loaves, rolls or a specialty bread, or spooned into a baking vessel, and finally baked in an oven.
There are two ways to make bread in your kitchen. In either case you have to do the measuring of ingredients, but how involved you want to be after that is up to you. If you have a bread machine, all you really have to do is measure the ingredients into the non-stick pan and hit a button or two on the bread maker control panel. In a few short hours you'll be treated to homemade bread.
The other way of making bread is to get right in there and measure and mix the ingredients, and then wait for a while to let the dough rise. After a time the dough will need to be 'punched down' where the air bubbles that have collected are removed and the dough is allowed to set and rise once or twice more, depending on the type of bread. Shaping the dough is up to you and if you don't have much practice, the look of your rolls or loaf may tell that you don't.
Some folks have trouble kneading the dough. Either their dough gets too hard from too much kneading, or their hands hurt from working the dough too much. Arthritis sufferers could use a bread machine to just make the dough. Until you know the look and feel of bread dough that's had enough kneading, it's much easier to just let the machine do the work. Also, the time factor alone might lead one to use a bread maker to make their bread dough. However long it takes, for you to mix the ingredients and knead the dough once or twice, is time saved when your dough is prepared by a bread machine.
To use a bread machine to make the dough and not bake it, look for a bread 'dough' cycle. One popular maker mixes the ingredients for 25 minutes and then lets the dough rise in a warm setting for 73 minutes more. It takes an hour and forty-five minutes to get to the point of removing the dough from the machine, but you don't have to do any kneading.
That's one nice thing about a bread machine. It's pretty much a hands-off operation. Once you fill the pan with the ingredients, you don't have to do anything else but clean up. The buzzer sound or count-down clock will tell you when your bread or bread dough is ready.
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