Shiz Can't Cook Series: Walnut Bread w/ Home Bakery Mini

So with all the ingredients in hand, I was ready to bake bread w/ the bread machine.

I was reluctant to start immediately... cuz I really don't like measuring.

And I don't really follow instructions, but it's really important to follow steps when it comes to baking, right?

But I realized I won't go forward unless I mess up once, so I decided to start.

Friday.
Like Sat said, I started w/ the basic white bread. But added walnuts to make a walnut bread, since you just had to chop the nuts & put them in when the machine beeps. Simple enough, eh?

Mistake #1: Never wear black when you're dealing w/ flour.
This should have been obvious, but I didn't think about it until I had flour all over. It's okay, though... you can just pat them off.

Mistake #2: Listen to Sasami when she says put a paper towel underneath, so you don't get flour all over the place.
I got flour all over the table, on the floor, on top of other things on the table. It's okay, though... you can just wipe the flour off.

Other things I should have thought about... like getting a container for the flour? I bought bulk bread flour at Sprouts, so it came in a plastic food bag. I was dumping it into a Ziplock container, but I should have something more... permanent. Will go look for sealable containers at BBB, Ross or Marshalls.

Anyway, everything went pretty good.

I put the pre-measured sugar, dry milk & salt in one container, so I could dump them all in after the flour. I also cut up the butter into small cubes, like the instructions said... and kept them on the small cutting board.

Water went in first (2/3 cup), then flour (2 cups), the sugar/milk/salt mix (1-1/2 Tbsp, 1-1/2 Tbsp, 1 tsp respectively), butter (1 Tbsp), and finally the active yeast.

I don't think I ever dealt w/ yeast before... and I didn't know they're "sticky." Like to each other. Kinda like the 砂鉄 when you put magnet in sand. It was very weird. And it was hard to measure the 1 tsp because of the stickiness.

And it says not to make the yeast touch the liquid ingredients (water?), but what about butter? It's kinda melty... I guess that's okay.

The bread came out pretty good.
Not great, but not bad either. It was good toasted.

Saturday.
We decided to make another batch for Saturday morning, since we had eaten most of the bread on Friday. This time, I was to attempt the "soft" bread setting.

It's like more water, extra all purp flour, more sugar, more dry milk.

This time, we didn't hear the beep to add the walnuts (it's supposed to beep 30 mins in), so we added the walnuts after the first knead was done. Oh well, the walnuts will probably be clumped in one area.

The softer version was yummier!
Yes, the walnuts weren't really mixed in well, but it wasn't noticeable.

The all purpose flour was old too, but we didn't taste anything weird.

Success!

I want to try olive bread some day... they don't have a recipe in the booklet, so I'll have to research it.

And eventually the scone. Mmmmm...