BREAD and Bread Machine

A larger-than-life picture greeted me when I first opened the book; and lemme tell ya, there are more of this from where it came from! This is a handy book to have, I especially liked how the pictures appealed to the palate. It felt like they were silently calling me to make them! The pictures are particularly helpful in giving the baker an idea on how the baked bread should look like.

And so goes the story...

As I was getting ready for bed, with a cookbook tucked under my arm, my sister A came traipsing into the room and giddily handed me a big book she borrowed from her friend. It became a long night for me, as it took me some time to greedily absorb every nook and cranny in this amazing book. And that's just for starters.

The next morning, I hurried off to make a nice breakfast and settled myself comfortably with my newly borrowed book.

Why I recommend this bread book is because, first off, aside from having a helluva number of recipes, it is a bit of a lecture book. It contains a step-by-step guide in shaping breads, folding croissant/danishes, using garnishes, and many others. The first few pages are about breads from all over the world. It gives an overview of the breads enjoyed by people from other parts of the world. And for those with bread machines, it also carries recipes especially formulated for it. And they're even adjusted for small, medium, and large sizes! How neat!

The recipes are wide ranged and divided into categories. There are the sourdoughs, sweet breads, celebration breads, flat breads, fruit breads, and vegetable breads. Some of them sounds new even to me -- Parsnip and Nutmeg Bread, Passion Tea Bread (which is actually made with carrots, go figure), and Grainy Mustard and Beer Bread, to name a few. It simply goes to show the endless possiblities one can do with bread. Some are good to eat on its own -- Sausage and Dill Bread (with fat whole sausages in every slice of the loaf!), Veal Tordu, Cottage Cheese and Salami, (the more common) Ham and Cheese Croissant, Mango Banana Bread, Fresh Tomato and Basil Bread...

I haven't made anything from it YET (!), since I only got it last night. But, I was told it can stay with me for as long as I want. Now, that's music to my ears.