As many of you know I work in food service at Saks Fifth Avenue’s New York store. You can probably imagine how busy I’ve been. I have had little time for home cooking or photographing our dishes at work.
I have minimal experience of baking and want to experiment in the new year and thought I’d get a jumpstart. I recently purchased a bread machine and have used it to make a few loaves and while they were pretty good I wanted to use it on the dough cycle and finish shaping and baking in a regular oven.
My first choice was to make some challah bread but I realized I had no honey so I replaced it with maple syrup. It was really quite delicious. This recipe will make two small loaves but I decided to make one loaf and some other dinner roll sized pieces, I basically just made knots. I found a silicone pan for mini brioche at my local discount store for three dollars and I think think the individual rolls cooked in them looked really good.
3/4 stick margarine almost melted
1 cup warm water
2 eggs
1/2 cup maple Syrup
1 teaspoon salt
4 cups bread flour
1 tablespoon yeast
You can put ingredients in machine in order recommended by manufacturer. I put all wet ingredients first and then the dry. . Turn on your dough cycle and you let the machine do the first part of the kneading and proofing. I really should have kneaded more flour into the dough but I will know better next time.
Once the dough cycle has finished you “punch down” the dough and then shape it as you like. The bread machine really is quite a good tool which with a little extra effort by the user you can get quite good results. This was a learning experience for me and I feel I can produce some interesting breads with some practice.
