Have Yourself a Bread Machine for Christmas; Make the Yuletide Gay!

For Christmas, my husband got me a very snazzy new bread machine. I was so excited to get it out of the box and start using it! He also bought me a really awesome book - Bread Machine Magic, by Linda Rehberg and Lois Conway. This book features 138 recipes for bread machines in small, medium, and large loaf sizes. Since I have never in my life made bread before, I opted to start out with a simple loaf, and made a sweet oatmeal loaf.

This bread machine is like having your own baker in the kitchen - literally, I added all the ingredients, hit a couple of buttons, and came back a little over 3 hours later to find a beautifully tanned loaf of bread waiting patiently for me to remove it from its non-stick nest. The Sweet Oatmeal Bread came out so delicious, and quickly inspired me to make more bread! Luckily, for New Year's Eve, we were heading to a dinner and music jam party, which gave me ample opportunity to create more deletable loafs! I chose I Herb Bread and also a Sunflower Oat Bread, both of which came out perfect!
The other great thing about this particular bread maker is that it actually make bread that looks like a loaf, not like an awkward kind of rectangular block like other bread makers I have seen. I look forward to trying out all the recipes in the book and making some delicious bread!