NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665

January 7, 1998

Prairie Fare: No Gadgets for Me

Those of you mourning the absence of "Seinfeld" from prime time TV probably recognize something familiar in the title of this column. I've tweaked the utterance "No soup for you!" made by the soup commandant (not his real moniker).

Those "Seinfeld" episodes featuring the soup commandant always intrigued me. I found the plot fascinatingthe idea that someone could make soup so delightful there would be people lining up in the street to buy it. Soup that good couldn't be the result of shortcuts, and that is the reason why I've abstained from buying most of the cooking gadgets on the market.

You'll find no garlic press in our kitchen. In fact, Nicki and I didn't become owners of a microwave until two years ago. So you can imagine how long it will be before a bread machine adorns our counter space. Probably some time around the 30th of never.

When it comes to bread baking at home, I'll stay with hand kneading or in a pinch, my heavy-duty mixer. Let me be clear: a mixer is not a gadget. By my definition, anything that appears in a commercial kitchen is not a gadget. Of course, this definition is rife with subjectivity because many restaurants rely on microwaves and the like. But once you venture beyond fast-food fare, microwave use in restaurants becomes more sporadic. Ask any well-respected chef what he or she thinks of microwave cookery.

But I'm getting off-message, as the professional politicians and business gurus are wont to say. This column is supposed to be about bread machines and recipes for those culinary contraptions. If those last two sentences make me seem as grumpy as the soup commandant, tough. I like to have fun when I bake or cook, and I don't understand how simply pouring ingredients into an electronic conglomeration of wire, computer chips, metal and plastic can be all that fun. Because I'm not a spoilsport, so here is a bread-machine recipe from Red Star Yeast & Products in Milwaukee.

Porcupine Bread
Yield: 15 servings (a 1-pound loaf)

Ingredients:
4 teaspoons sesame seeds
3 tablespoons sunflower seeds
1/3 cup raisins
4 teaspoons vegetable oil
1/3 cup water, room temperature
2/3 cup buttermilk, room temperature
4 teaspoons sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup rolled oats
2 cups bread flour
1½ teaspoons active dry yeast
1 whole egg blended with 1 tablespoon water (egg wash)

Procedure:
Place ingredients into the bread machine's pan in the order listed in the manual. Use a bread/medium setting. When the machine begins "bake," lift the lid and brush the loaf's top with the egg wash, and then sprinkle with additional sunflower and sesame seeds if desired.

What's Your Take on This, Julie?

Waking up to the nostalgic aroma of freshly baked bread, with little mess or effort, appeals to me. I think gadgets have their place, especially if the novelty doesn't wear off, leaving you with a dusty appliance and no counter space. Bread machines are now more popular than food processors, and they've come down substantially in price in recent years.

Basically, bread machines are mini-ovens with paddles or pins that develop the protein or gluten in the flour. Without the kneading action, whether done by hand or machine, we wouldn't have bread as we commonly think of it.

Bread machines usually come with a variety of tested bread formulations. Once you get started you may want to try adapting your recipes. The condition of the dough is a critical factor in producing a prime loaf, and it mainly depends on the flour moisture level, which can vary due to growing conditions, harvest, milling or storage.

All bread machine recipes are based on the weight of the flour. When creating or adapting your own recipes, the rule of thumb is: for each cup of bread flour, use 1/3 cup liquid, 2 teaspoons fat, ½ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon sweetener, and ¾ teaspoon active dry yeast. Bread flour, with its higher protein content, produces the best quality loaf. Besides water, liquid ingredients may include milk, juice, sour cream, buttermilk and eggs (one large egg equals ¼ cup liquid).

Listen to the bread machine during the first five minutes of kneading. If it seems to be working too hard or if the dough appears dry, you probably need to add more liquid1 tablespoon at a time. If the dough is too wet, add more flour, 1 tablespoon at a time. If you don't like the shape produced in your bread machine, you can always remove the dough before the baking cycle and form it into rolls or conventional loaves.

The product of a bread machine is very nutritious and will vary with the ingredients you add. A slice (1/15 of the loaf) of Porcupine Bread contains 125 calories and 3.5 grams of fat. It also provides some iron from the flour and calcium from the buttermilk.

Enjoy! And remember: bread doesn't make you fat. Too many caloriesfrom any sourceand too little exercise do.

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Sources: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136 and Julie Garden-Robinson (701) 231-7187

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