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Ella makes bread

One of Ella's chores (suggested by her Aunt L.) is to put the stuff in the bread maker every night and program it so we have warm bread in the morning. This works well, and is also a great science experiment. We have discovered that:
  • Bread made without salt looks OK but is barely edible.
  • Bread made with 3 times the salt is inedible, and doesn't rise right.
  • Bread made with no yeast is edible, sort of like a tasty rock is edible, and
  • Ella really needs a system to make sure she puts the right ingredients in the right amounts in the right order.
I've encouraged her to line up the ingredients on the counter before she starts along with the correct measuring equipment. After the last failure she allowed that that might be a good idea. We'll see.

Here's our recipe for bread:

1 1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp. Earth Balance buttery stick
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 Tbsp. sugar
2 cups whole wheat flour (we get ours from Great Harvest)
1 cup white flour (bread flour makes it rise better)
1 1/2 tsp. yeast

Put the water in the bread machine, making sure that the paddle is in it. Add the "butter", salt and sugar. Sprinkle first the whole wheat flour and then the white flour on top. Make a small well for the yeast, making sure that no water touches the yeast. Bake on the whole wheat cycle with the 1.5 lb loaf and dark crust options. Schedule to get done by 6:30.

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