Best Bread Recipe Ever

Posted on Aug 27, 2014 | 1 comment

Last year Santa bought me a bread machine.

I had never considered making my own bread, I mean it is bread right? How could the stuff in the store be bad?

So I thought I would stash it in a cabinet and take it out for special occasions.

Until I took the time to read the ingredients for the store bought bread I was feeding my family with….

First, the list of ingredients is really long. Second, I could not even pronounce half of the ingredients.

Not good.

Thus began my quest to find the perfect, simple bread recipe and my promise to only feed my family homemade bread from now on.

Tips for the bread machine

I have this Cuisinart BMKR-200PC Fully Automatic Compact Bread Maker, 2-Pound and I love it. Here are a few things I do:

When making any type of bread, always put liquid ingredients in first, then dry ingredients and lastly add the yeast.

As soon as it is done mixing and rising, I pull it out, put it in a loaf pan and cook it in my conventional oven. This makes it a more family friendly shape.

It is so easy to clean if you keep up with it, a quick wipe down after removing the dough is all it needs.

Best Bread Recipe Ever

After a lot (and I mean a lot) of trial and error, I have perfected this recipe for bread. I make about 3 loafs a week (we are a family of 4) and this yields enough for sandwiches, dinner bread and morning toast.

1 cup Almond Milk 1 ¼ tsp. of Salt
¼ cup of Water ¾ cup of Oats
¼ cup of Honey 3 cups of Bread Flour
2 tbsp. of Organic Butter 2 ¼ tsp. of Yeast (I have been using Rapid Rise, but either kind works)
1 tbsp. of Coconut Oil

Combine milk, water, honey, butter and oil and heat to about 80°. You can do this either in a pan on your stove top or in the microwave. I prefer stove top as I do not really like microwaves. Poor into bread machine.

Add remaining ingredients in this order: oats, salt, flour and yeast on the very top. Do your best not to let the yeast touch the liquid.

Set bread machine to either 1 or 2 depending on if you are using rapid rise yeast or regular yeast. Set the loaf size to 1.5. Press Start! It is that easy! 9 ingredients, press a few buttons and you are on your way to fresh, healthy bread!!

My machine beeps 6x, 3x in a row when it has completed its kneading and rising cycle. You can leave it in there and let it cook but it comes out as a giant square so I have found it better to remove the dough as soon as I hear these beeps and put it in loaf pan.

I coat all of the dough in olive oil. Then cover and let rise for about 30 more minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°.

Secret Trick: Since we live in a drier climate, I have found putting another loaf pan (or some metal pan/pot) in the oven as you are preheating filled with hot water really helps make the bread moister. I leave the water in until the bread has finished cooking. The bread just does not come out the same if I do not do this!!

Cook for about 40 minutes. Pull out, let cool on a wire rack and wa-la – you have healthy bread for the whole family. I wait until it is completely cool before slicing. However, for a little treat, try it warm out of the oven! So good!

It is super easy and delicious!

If you do not have a bread machine, you can still follow this recipe, it will just be a bit more work.

Combine all ingredients, knead for 10 minutes, let rise for an hour, knead again for about 2 minutes, coat with olive oil, put in a loaf pan and let rise for 30 more minutes. Preheat oven and follow the rest of the above directions.

I hope you find this recipe helpful, how did it work out for you?

Cheers and Happy Baking!
Malibu Mama Loves Xx