First bread by breadmaker

Okay, I eventually made up my mind to buy a breadmaker, so that I could still enjoy the fresh and healthy bread even though I am busier and busier.

The first baking failed. I tried the sandwich recipe in the manual book. The bread was almost white on the top, not brown at all. I read the manual book once more, and found that I should not open the unit to peek. Well, I admit that I did it twice. But who could help oneself from doing this at the first time using breadmaker? :P

Besides, the bread was very heavy. I bet if I throw it to someone, he would be unluckily hurt.

I tried again, no peeking, and adding more yeast according to my own recipe. The result was not bad, brown bread and lighter. But, compared with my hand-kneed bread, it was definitely a bad bread. And a big problem was that I could see some yeast particles on the surface of bread, which means the yeast was not all dissolved yet.

I wonder why we should add yeast last. That's really weird.

Look at my third try -- isn't it good?

My secret is adding yeast FIRST. Here is my recipe:

(1) Add 1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast into 3/4 cup warm milk (or water), let it become foamy;

(2) Add 1 egg, 1/4 cup sugar and 2 tbsp margarine (cut into small pieces);

(3) Add 3 cup all purpose flour;

(4) Make small indentation with my finger in the top of flour and add 1 tsp salt (don't let
salt touch liquid below);

(5) Insert bread pan and select: sweet/2.5 lb/light;

(6) When the bread is done, let it sit in the breadmaker for 1 hour and then transfer it onto the rack to cool (this makes bread softer).