Why cyborg?
Well, because this very nice loaf of bread started out in the bread machine, but was then rescued from teh machine and finished in the oven in a traditional bread pan.
The result?
No more hoooge “paddle hole” in the middle of the loaf; but still a wicked tasty loaf of home made French bread; perfect for sammiches, and toast, and…
whatever floats your fancy. This is the loaf of bread you need to bring your bread machine out of the shadows and dust off – da google knows that my 20 year old machine is gonna see a lot more use this holidaze season!
INGREDIENTS
•1 tbsp olive oil
•1-1/3 cup water
•1-1/2 tbsp honey*
•3 cups flour
•1 tbsp sugar
•1/2 tsp salt
•2 tsp yeast
*I used Mike’s Hot Honey which is infused with chilies, but everyday honey will most certainly work a treat here.
The only tricky part of this recipe/method is that you need to load the ingredients into your bread machine in the order specified by your particular machine. My machine’s instructions are “Wet. Dry. Yeast.”
With that said, load the ingredients – in my case, the olive oil, water, and honey; then the flour, sugar, and salt, and finally the yeast in the bread machine pan – in the order called for by you machine.
Push the “Dough” button, then go about your life.
The machine will mix and knead and worry about the first rise of the dough, and then, with all that bother out of the way, it will beep to tell you when you actually need to do something about it all.
Brush a loaf pan with olive oil, then punch the dough down, gather into a ball, and arrange in the prepared loaf pan.
Cover with a clean kitchen towel and set aside to rise for an hour or so.
While the bread is rising in the loaf pan, heat your oven to 375º.
Pop your risen loaf into the hot oven and bake until it is golden brown and sound hollow when thumped – mine was perfect in about 40 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool before slicing – it will be hard, I know, because – fresh baked bread! – but truly, this bread cuts better when cool, so, be patient.
*SIGH*
This is the bread I’ve been waiting for; totally worth the carbs.