Bread machine saga

Two weeks ago, one of the items in our garage sale was a Welbilt bread machine. Remember them? When they came out, we loved how easy it was to make delicious loaves of bread. We sampled many varieties, cooking a loaf or two each week. Then along came the Atkins diet and we dropped most of our bread eating and therefore bread baking. The machine sat quietly in our pantry for the past 5 or 6 years.

The garage sale encouraged us to bring it out and sell it. Many people looked at it during that day, but no one wanted to buy it. So, back inside the garage it came until the next sale, which we knew would be in 2 weeks (yesterday).

However, during our evening walk on the following Thursday, a car approached us and the woman passenger rolled down her window and asked if the bread machine was still available. Although neither hubby nor I remembered her at the sale, apparently she had been there. We told her it was available and she was welcome to come for it. She replied that she would buy it the next day after work.

The next day, instead of picking it up right then, she said she wanted me to bring it to her house on Sunday and show her how to use it. “Good grief!” I thought to myself. More gently, I told her it was quite easy to use. Just take it home and read the directions. It turns out she doesn’t read English very well, only Creole.

After she left, I decided if I was going to teach someone how to use it, I would need to make a loaf myself to remember how it’s done.

So, on Saturday I found an old jar of Fleishman's yeast and assumed I had enough flour to make one loaf. I proofed the yeast and it was fine. But, as I began to gather the ingredients together, I realized I didn’t have enough flour after all. So, off to Publix I drove to pick up a 5-lb bag of King Arthur bread flour.

Now, the last time I bought bread flour, there were at least 6 or 7 varieties of special bread making mixes: raisin, whole wheat, cranberry, etc. This time there wasn’t even one of those, just a bag of bread flour. Talk about short-lived fads!

So, I bought and brought home the flour and proceeded to put all the ingredients into the machine pan, turn it on and left it to go to an appointment hubby and I needed to keep.

When we returned, around dinnertime, it turned out that the bread was so fresh and delicious, that it was my main meal of the day! Yes, I mean just slices of bread lathered with soft Land O Lakes Whipped Butter, some bites spread with Smucker's black raspberry or strawberry jam. Talk about heaven! Hmmm-hmmm-good!

Now I was ready to give a lesson the next day. But, the woman never called or came by. On the next Thursday, I made a loaf of raisin bread. It was another "hmmm-hmmm-good" moment. Furthermore, on Saturday morning we used a few slices for our French toast breakfast.

We put the machine out for sale again; but this time there were very few admirers of it. So, today I made another loaf of egg bread. You can see we’re no longer using the Atkins way of eating!

I’m pretty sure that if someone offered to buy it, I would sell it. Meanwhile, though, I’m enjoying every bite of these delicious loaves and planning to make more!