It is cold. We woke up to 19F. For Celsius folks, we’re at -7. It was even colder last night. The wind outside is making winter storm noises. It’s a kind of low growling as it whistles past the oaks.
Whenever these numbers come out, there is always a lovely Canadian person who is like it’s -40C where we are. Yes, but your electric grid and houses are built for cold. Our houses are built to maximize the AC benefits and compensate for 6 months of 95-105F degree weather. I have exactly one small area in the house where there is enough light to grow plants, because all other rooms are too shadowy. And last week, we were in shorts.
We built a big old fire in the fireplace. The dogs have positioned themselves in front of it and are refusing to budge. Yesterday, just as the temperatures really started to drop, Gordon and I made a couple of trips to the wood pile with our wagon and hauled the wood inside. As usual, Charlie and Nykie accompanied us, because that’s what dogs do, and Tuna also followed us. Tuna is a very dignified cat. She doesn’t hurry. She strides, surveying her domain.
The first trip went fine. On the second trip, just as we were finishing up, a gust of ice-cold wind hit. Tuna took that hit, spun around, and sprinted. She dashed back to the house, leaping over things, like a small orange tiger. And then, when we made it to the door, she gave us this indignant meow that clearly said, “Took you long enough.”
Predictably the cold caused a run on the grocery stores. We have 2 whole days of freezing temperatures. The apocalypse is nigh. Kid 2 went to pick up a couple of things at H-E-B on Friday.
I call this the “No Meat” picture. Thankfully all of us have stocked up in advance. I made a big roast, which we can slice for sandwiches and right now I’m making bread.
The bread machine Gordon bought for me has become one of my MVP appliances. I’ve made all sorts of bread now, but the recipe I make most often is Pain Ordinaire Au Beurre, which I found in The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook by Beth Hensperger.
This bread has a long name, which translates to plain bread with butter, but a very short and easy recipe, and best of all, unlike the other breads I make, this one can be baked by the machine. It comes out great on French bread cycle. Set it and forget it.
1 1/2 Pound Loaf
- 1 1/4 cup water
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into pieces
- 3 cups all purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons gluten
- 1 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast
Throw everything into the machine in the order your machine likes it. For me, it’s water, butter, flour, gluten, salt along the perimeter, make a little hole in the center of the flour, and pour the yeast in. Select French or European bread cycle. Walk away.
This bread is great, low sugar content, soft but firm enough for sandwiches, however, it is best when eaten on the same day. The book has a recipe for 2 lb. loaf as well. The cookbook is excellent, by the way. I have the paperback version, but it is right now available on Kindle Unlimited.
Edit Mod R: Ilona’s bread machine is the Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker, 2 lb. loaf of bread, Stainless Steel/Black.
You can see more about it in this post.
Your bread sounds wonderful. However, I won’t be buying a machine because then I would have an excuse to constantly make, and eat, all that bread. Bread is my kryptonite. I have no resistance. I can resist almost anything, but warm, fresh bread? Nope.
My daughter bought me a bread machine for Christmas last year and I used it once and the bread came out gross. I’ve used bread machines in the past and not had a problem. I thought maybe it was my yeast. So I threw away the yeast I had on hand and bought more yeast. I made another loaf and yet it still came out not right. Sigh…..
I don’t know what I’m doing wrong with this new bread machine but it’s driving me crazy. I’m discouraged and don’t want to even try using it.
I want to be able to use this recipe that you’ve provided. So I’m going to give it one more shot. I have to buy gluten though, which is something I’ve not ever been prompted to put into a bread recipe before. Nonetheless I’m going to give it a one last try. Wish me luck.
Good luck, let us know if that made the difference! 🤞🏻
Ok I feel totally uninformed – you can buy just gluten? I haven’t seen a recipe before that called for additional gluten, nor have I seen gluten at the store. Is that something you need to special order?
A lot of stores carry it. It comes in a little packet in a powder form, kind of like dry milk, and you just toss a couple of teaspoons in. Here is an Amazon link, but I would check the local grocery. https://www.amazon.com/Vital-Gluten-Anthonys-Pounds-Protein/dp/B00PB8U7Y0/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?crid=2POAWOP26ZCB8&keywords=gluten&qid=1705425852&sprefix=gluten%2Caps%2C139&sr=8-2-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&psc=1
Thank you!
Yes, you can buy gluten (wheat gluten) on its own. It is used in baking or to make seitan, so you will find it of course online, but also baking isles and natural/health food stores or Asian stores 🙂.
Thank you for the explanation!
I often make bread (by hand, I don’t have a bread machine), and I am also mostly-vegetarian so I do have vital wheat gluten on hand to make seitan…but I’ve never seen gluten listed in bread recipes before and I didn’t make the connection!
This makes perfect sense to me as gluten would add extra protein to improve the bread texture. And now you’ve given me an excellent plan – bake bread and make soup- for the rest of this snowy and cold (app. 25F) day in NJ! 😁
Hang in there everyone, especially those who have it much worse than NJ at the moment. At least we in NJ are used to this weather…I can feel the pain of HA (and others in normally warm places!) Sending virtual hugs and warming thoughts your way!!! 💕💕💕
I’m on my 2nd or 3rd bread maker. Honestly, it only gets used to make the dough itself these days. It’s 20+ years old and makes a fugly loaf. BUT. The recipe for brioche dough is much loved here, and I used that for cinnamon rolls too. It has a decent oatmeal bread recipe too. I’ve got 3-4 bread cookbooks, but really and truly, the very small booklet that came with the breadmaker all those years ago is the one marked up to suit our family of 5 (all kids now grown and out) and loved. Grease spots, wrinkles and all.
we are at minus 3F right now, I believe minus 14 predicted for tonight. but our meat counters are full! (Chicago area). the hensperger book is terrific. if you have a rice cooker, get her rice cooker cookbook, it is awesome.
my cousin grew up outside Dallas and moved (nearly 30 years ago – gulp!) to Oregon. she was the it person for the construction company that built her house. having come from texas, she INSISTED on central air. they had never built a house with central a/c before and kept telling her how crazy she was. i don’t think she turned it on for the first 15 years she lived there. now, she looks like a genius because she’s got the only house in the subdivision that was built with and for central air.
i live outside of chicago, but i moved to north carolina for a job years ago. i LOVED my house in NC, but wouldn’t have been able to live in it here – there was a space wide enough for frogs to hop in under my door and most of the super old windows were cracked. if it dropped to 50F, it was really uncomfortable, even with zoned heat.
as for now, it has warmed up to -1, but feels like -20 with the wind chill. i’ve got a head of cauliflower in the fridge that i’m planning to make into some sort of soup for dinner but now i want bread. i have yeast and the ingredients…
It only got to -20C here in my corner of Canada 😂 The cold isn’t the problem it’s the winds we’ve had. Thankfully the lights were out only 6hrs during the “Texas low” on the weekend. No lights = no water so I have supplies all over the house.
Stay warm. Spring returns next week
here. Then you start to worry about freezing rain… can’t win.
I sorry if this question has been asked before, but which bread machine do you have or recommend? And does it leave a whole in the middle of the loaf?
In this frigid weather fresh bread sounds heavenly!
It’s the Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker, 2 lb. loaf of bread, Stainless Steel/Black
.
You can see more about it in this post 🙂 https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/surprise-bread/
That is my go to Bread machine cookbook. I’ve had only one recipe fail because I did not use my brain when looking at it. The recipe called for 6 cups of AP flour and that’s what I added. To say the least, I had a mess and no bread to serve. Lesson learned.
Thanks for the cookbook recommendation. Just ordered the paperback. 300 recipes will find me one I like. In south of Germany there are similar temperatures at the moment and tonoght it will start warming up. And raining. We’re awaiting black ice. Tomorrow it will rise up to 10 degrees Celsius plus and then by night down again to 10 degrees Celsius minus. Weird. Stay warm and safe.
I love my bread machine, we have been making bread (and pizza dough) in it for probably 18 years. Though we have gone through a few machines. This is our go to recipe (also from a bread book similar to yours).
1 cup water or milk
2 tablespoons olive oil (or butter)
2 tablespoons honey or brown sugar
1.5 teaspoons salt
2 cups bread flour
1 cup wheat flour (my mom uses 2.5 cups wheat flour and 1/2 cup bread flour)
2 teaspoons yeast
I tend to use more wheat flour for pizza or calzone dough, then more bread flour for normal bread. It is funny, it is so easy to make dough in it. Yet whenever I bring anything yeast related somewhere, people love it but are scared to try themselves. Soft pretzels and cinnamon rolls are other favorites
Our bread, in a plastic bread box, seems to last about 3 days before getting a bit stale.
I have a dog who can’t stand the cold.
I have a winter coat for her (because Canada and my dog does not have an undercoat) and it takes at least 5 minutes to bundle both of us up.
This morning I took her out, she did her business on our front lawn and promptly ran back to the door.
It took her one minute. She was done 😂.
My husband was from northern Ontario and after we settled in southern Ohio he didn’t even bother to buy a winter coat or boots as our weather was so much warmer, comparatively speaking. Gave me lots of withering glances when schools or highways closed when it snowed. And always had his skates in the trunk of the car in case he ran across someplace great to skate. Yeah, that happens a lot in Cincinnati.
I agree with another poster — wool sweaters are the greatest keep-warm assets. Just ruinously expensive these days.
What bread machine do you specifically have? I want to get involved with more of my own bread and less from the store.
It’s the Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker, 2 lb. loaf of bread, Stainless Steel/Black
.
You can see more about it in this post 🙂 https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/surprise-bread/
people always do this & it’s annoying.
there are some rude fools on Facebook griping because school was switched to online in the Louisville area since it’s in the single digits…
these kids wouldn’t have survived fifty years ago
50 years ago, there were far fewer families who were either single parent or required both parents working, meaning n9e there are far more kids stuck riding busses & Louisville has this serious bus driver shortage where sometimes kids are literally stuck waiting an hour or more for their ride – IF IT COMES.
50 years ago, tech didn’t allow for schooling online at home.
so often, people don’t look past their own experiences.
I’m west of Ft. Worth, Sunday we didn’t get above 13 degrees, low was 9 this morning with a windchill of -5. We got up to 29 yesterday with some sun and my backflow valve on my sprinkler system is toast due to frozen pipes. To say TEXAS is’t built for this is an understatement! I lived at over 8k feet in CO for 4 yrs and never had any pipes freeze! But my house is fine. Stay warm!
While I do tease my Southern friends about the lack of cold tolerance, here is a 100% true fact: the coldest I have ever been, in my life, was 3C (37F) in Australia. I have been outside where the actual temperature was -35F and the wind chills were a howling -57F. I winter camp in the snow. I worked in Alaska. And absolutely none of it compared to an above freezing temperature in subtropical Australia. Why? Because I was completely unprepared for those conditions. I’d packed assuming the weather would at worst get down into upper 40s, but the town I lived in hit record lows for a couple of nights while I was there.
Preparedness and resources make all the difference!
I’m in Minnesota. I’ll spare you any temperature comparisons and just say, winter is cold and it often feels like an emergency when it gets a lot colder very fast and I’m glad you got your wood inside in spite of Tuna’s displeasure.
Thanks for the bread recipe and especially for mentioning the French bread setting on the machine.
I go through phases of using my bread machine and somehow always seem to start in June, which makes zero sense. This time, amazingly, I started in the sensible season for bread-baking. I have been wondering if I have to start baking the bread in my regular oven to get a slightly different final product, but now I’ll try the French bread setting on my machine first. (Because the temperature is unreliable in my oven… and I don’t want to work that hard.)
Thanks ModR for the machine type. Bread is my downfall, love it. Thanks for the information on the cookbook as well. Stay safe and stay warm everyone!
i live in Montana, and my dad lived in North Carolina and later Florida. when we would talk on the phone in the winter he would tease me about my cold weather. So in the summer i would tease him about the heat. I miss that now he’s gone.
Prep in the bread machine, but using the oven to bake will diffuse more heat to your home.
Overnight lows here in Alabama reached -7 degrees F, equivalent to-14 C. We have about 5 inches of snow, so there’s no point in going out because everything is closed. May I suggest that this is an excellent moment for making lasagna, or pasticio? I presume that you have determined to experiment with low carb pastas?
I think we’re just going to get more and more of these wild weather swings. If it’s not region typical any chill is going to cause havoc. I’m in BC’s coast. Were frigid and HUMID frigid. Hospitals have burst pipes. Not good.
Stay warm, Horde! And safe. Please, please if it’s not an area where you get snow regularly, consider not driving in it. You may be equipped but I guarantee there will be reckless idiots out there who aren’t.
Ironically, I’m in Austin this week from Toronto. The guys here are saying that I brought the weather 🙁
The one week of the year that Austin is cold. I packed all my winter clothes…
My grandmother made bread by hand every week. When it was still warm, she would rub the outside with butter all over. She said it helped the bread keep longer. I do this with my bread machine baking. it seems to help it keep from getting stale.
my mom also makes read and the prices for bread it ridiculous here in Canada.
it’s cold in Toronto as well, even though we have the heater on its still cold in the house. I’ve been layering up cosy sweaters and sleepers/socks
All you guys with -40C – let me tell you my sad, sad tale. I have three chili pepper plants I’m overwintering and it got so cold in my atrium that one died! Yes, the temp got below 14C! It was awful! Just kidding. Wells, not about the plant because it really did die, but this winter hasn’t been very cold where we are – nestled just 60km/40miles east of San Francisco. We finally turned on our heater a week ago.
Thank you for using Celsius as well! We have the same weather here in Denmark and I always think I am lucky that I have a desk job I can do from home when the need arises.
And thank you for the book recommendation. I might dig my bread machine out from the depths of my basement and try some recipes.
Thank you for “translating” the temperature into Celsius 🥰
I know that I could have learned it by now, but I’m always struggling to remember the math of converting. I read nearly all my books in English and every time when there is an information about the weather I’m just like “ok 40F?… hm… the protagonist wears a jacket and a scarf… in I assume it’s cold”… and then I move on reading without ever checking what temperature it actually is 😂
I was just talking about getting out my bread maker again yesterday, and today I read this. Clearly fate is intervening and I better obey.
I’ll have to try your bread recipe. My favorite from Beth H. is the Dakota bread, lots of seeds inside. My husband makes most of the bread; I’m in charge of the apple pie, but I don’t have any of Kate’s magic apples.
Completely understand about living in the south during the cold. Our house is cinder block with ceramic tile floors which is great in ten months of the year as it holds cold, but not the best in winter. My dogs are wearing coats indoors. My bird is huddled next to his heated buddy warmer.
And then there are the plants. Why do we grow tropical plants knowing that we will experience freezes? Cover the plants, uncover the plants, cover the plants, uncover the plants,… That is our winter outside. Living in a climate where you wear shorts one day then a parka two days later and then back to shorts has its own endless issues.
lol, reading this post while my newly acquired bread machine (tefal) is making a kugel-something-german-sounding, basically a brioche with raisins and almonds. house smells nice 🙂
I love the ease of making bread in the machine, and that I don’t have to run the big oven for a small loaf. I don’t love the hole at the bottom, but I can live with it.
Thank you for the picture of the bread book! I’ll buy it when I get bored with the few recepies that came with the machine.
I’ve had that cookbook since it first came out, to go with a brand new bread machine. It’s truly excellent! But you remind me that there are many recipes that I never got around to. Might be time to try a new one.
So fortunate to be in Florida where cold is in the 50 still inspired baking today though scones to go with the blueberries I purchased and rosemary cheddar biscuits for the vegetable soup I made. Hope you warm up a bit aoon
I just stoped reading Magic Breaks (not the first read obviously cause nothing short of death could have made me stop reading any of the books the first read though) to read your post. Clearly the BDH in me is restless this week. Kate always does what I wish I could do, just kick everyone’s ass until the all the people we love are safe.
I live on an island (that looks like a peninsula) in Lake Superior (not Canada, Michigan). it’s currently 7 degrees here. We’ve had 53 inches of snow since last Friday, and are having a tiny sunny break until tonight when the snow machine starts again.
It’s 1130am.and my house has finally warmed up enough to get a shower(70 degrees)
why do I live here? because we NEVER get weather in the 100 degree range. :).
I will top that story.
You haven’t lived until you are awoken at 5am on Sunday (this would be Jan 14th) during a Polar Vortex by tiny mewling. Still not quite awake, you yell at foster dog#2, Retro what-the-heck it’s 5am!?!
Then the brain cells kick in…wait a minute it’s tiny mewling. Retro is vocally louder. Bolt upright you check at the end of the MASTER BED and foster dog#1 is now giving birth. There are 2 black potatoes.
Frantic texting occurs, to the rescue vet, to the rescue coordinator and to your boss. Later, the rescue vet & his vet tech call from their car. “Congratulations! How many do you have?”
What do you mean how many? There’s 2!
“She’s a bigger dog. They can have 10-14” Grace/Rosa is (best guess) Border Collie/Great Pyr mix.
A quick check reveals 6. SIX potatoes!
“She could have more thru Sunday but don’t let her outside. If she has any puppies outside they will freeze solid. She could also give birth into Monday.”
Rescue coordinator – “Congratulations. Funny story, Grace/Rosa was boarded at a vet for 2 days before coming up to us.”
Me – CLEARLY, they missed something!
I pulled the plastic kiddy pool in from the garage, got a bunch of towels and a new featherbed off of FB Marketplace. Total count is 6 potatoes. 5 black and one tan/brown. The tan/brown one and one black one are at LARGE potato size. The other 4 are at medium potato size.
sigh
Awwww, polar puppies! Who says potatoes won’t grow in the Arctic 😀
My son’s favorite bread recipe is a dark wheat and rye blend with espresso and molasses in it. A meal on it own. Delicious with butter.
I have the same book, there are a number of recipes that I love from it! But I have not tried the one listed here, thank you for the recommendation. My family always asks me to make the rye bread from that book for get togethers and holidays.
You always share recipes with us, so I thought I would share mine with you.
For a 1 lb loaf of bread machine bread:
2 1/4 cups of bread flour
2 Tbs of King Arthur Instant Sourdough Flavor
1 tsp salt
1 Tbs Buttermilk blend (the powdered stuff you get in the baking lane of HEB)
1 Tbs butter
1 cup skim milk microwaved for 40 seconds to take the chill off
2 Tbs honey
1 heaping tsp yeast
I am only able to get the King Arthur Instant Sourdough Flavor through mail order. I’m not trying to shill for King Arthur, but if you want to buy other stuff to get free shipping, I like the parchment baking sheets and the cookbooks. You can make this bread without the Instant Sourdough Flavor, and it is still good, just not as good.
Oooooo! Thank you! Much appreciated!
We have had polar vortex in Southern Indiana also and I hate it. We have horses so it takes longer to take care of them in weather you just want to stay in and read a book ! I needed comfort so I reread Sweep of the Heart. Thanks so much for my comfort read!! I love all your series but for some reason the innkeeper series is my top for rereading over & over when in need for something exciting but also comforting.