So I live in Canada, I’m originally from New York but I married a Canadian and moved up to the great white north.  What does living in Canada have to do with bread?  Quite a bit, you see in the two plus years I have lived here I have been searching for good bread.  I love bread, I really do, I love variety in my bread too.  Up here I feel limited.  The only bread I like that can be bought at the grocery store is either d’Italiano or the frozen Italian bread you bake to go with lasagna. (Oddly enough, one of the two brands I like is also d’Italiano, the other is the M&Ms Meat Shop brand)  The bakeries aren’t that helpful either, I have bought some bakery bread at the farmers market and while it was good, it was too expensive to buy on a regular basis.

I have been wanting to bake my own, I used to work in a bakery and I know it’s time consuming but how hard could it be?  I have the kneading tool for my mix master so that part, the really hard part would be done for me.  Three people I think are kinda awesome both make bread a lot, (@vividmuse, @encaf1 & Sport) and when I hear about them making their own bread my mouth waters and I just want to try it.  Then I found out that my sister got a new bread machine for Christmas.  She was happy because she couldn’t use her old one anymore because she had used it before her daughter was diagnosed Coeliac disease, since the flour gets into all the parts of the machine, she can’t use it to make Gluten free bread.  So I of course ask what is she going to do with her old machine.  She didn’t imagine making any Gluten bread so she said I could have it.  Now my sister hasn’t been making her own bread recently (meaning the last few years) but since her daughter has been diagnosed the idea of baking her own was appealing since the store alternatives are not that great.  When I went to visit I saw her whole family just in love with the gluten free bread, and that bread was really good.  So thanks @caelann for the bread maker.

My first loaf was a basic white bread that I used the recipe from the manual.  It came out really good, so today I experimented, I combined two recipes to make an oat cranberry bread and it turned out mostly amazing.  I added the cranberries a little late, the machine didn’t beep when I thought it would, to let me know when the kneading was close to done.  Next time I will get it right.  As it is now though it is damn tasty.  Each time I took the bread out of the machine I gave the first slices to my husband, my gunia pig, and he loved them both.  This time though, the oat cranberry time he kept going back for more, so I take that as a win.

So now I need some more fun recipes, got one for potato bread, I plan on trying that one.

Does anyone have tips for me?  How to make the crust softer?  Good recipes? How to keep the bread softer for longer? (I have been wrapping it in a towel for now.  Anyone out there making bread too?  Got stories to share?  Please, share them.