GWlolo My breakfast this morning was a thick slice of toasted heel topped with peanut butter and a sliced granny smith apple. Really, really good. Karen, Wish I could offer you a slice--with or without peanut butter and apple. Annie and Ann I had no idea what to expect. I certainly did not expect the perfectly browned top crust. Wish I knew more about baking bread. Would the crust be better if I baked it in the oven? Hard to imagine. I weighed the ingredients and there was no need to adjust anything during the kneading process. It was SO much fun to watch the kneading happen through the little lid window! Mustangs, I think this may be nearly at the top of my small kitchen appliances. The Breville toaster oven is my absolute fav., but this promises to be second. Last night I was wondering about flavored breads: a line of what ifs formed in my head. For instance, what if I added basil and dried tomato to the assembly line, subbed out olive oil for the butter? Would it be as pretty as I imagined and taste as good? And questions--do I need to change the liquid amount if I sub oil for butter? The next loaf will be a whole grains loaf, I think. I bought some of the Red Mill 10 grain cereal as suggested by someone in GWlolo's DH tutorial thread. Gotta do some reading about this. Anyway, thanks again everyone for the help in deciding. I could not be more pleased with the result.

Those Bagettes look yummy and easy to make. Thanks for the recipe. My DIL swears by her KA too. I ordered a machine and it should come today! But it was very inexpensive with mostly great reviews. What I like about it is that it matches the kitchen, and doesn't take up a lot of room. Link below. The biggest complaint is it's hard to read the panel because of the yellow background, but I keep my kitchen glasses sitting on the counter at all times. :) Natal, if you're reading this...the machine gives me three choices of crust color. Wouldn't that effect the texture of the bread if I chose a light or dark color? Also, I was looking at the bread mixes on King Arthurs, they have one that is a sugar/cinnamon bread. I read the reviews and no one mentioned adding raisins to it. I love me some raisin bread! Is it okay to add raisins to a mix like that? Here is a link that might be useful: Bread Machine

I'm a happy Zo owner and am on my second one - wore the first one out. I use it for making nearly all the dough I make, but never bake in it. There's also just two of us, but I bake ahead and fill my freezer with all kinds of things divided in single-serving sizes. In the summer I can bake a loaf of bread in my Sharp Microwave/Convection Oven in 20-minutes without ANY preheating (25 minutes for 2 loaves) or I'll bake in my Solar Oven. I like the results better than in the Zo. I usually make the largest amount of dough (2#) that a recipe will make and divide it into 2 loaves (we use one loaf of bread per week). Use one and freeze one. My "everyday" 100% whole wheat bread recipe makes 2.5 pounds and I can get several things out of this amount of dough. Some combination of the following, depending on what I need to fill the freezer with: 1- one-pound Pullman Loaf or regular loaf 6- jumbo pecan or cinnamon rolls 4-6 hot dog buns 8-inch square pan of dinner rolls 6 hamburger/sandwich buns So think past loaves.... I make sourdough all the time. I just use the dough cycle and remove the dough from the bread machine as soon as the kneading is finished. I put the dough into a dough rising bucket to finish the first rise. Because sourdough raises much slower than bakers' yeast dough, I always remove the dough from the bread machine and watch the rise myself. If you do decide on the smaller Zo (which I don't think is a bad decision), you can always do what I do when I have a "marathon" baking to do. I'll make consecutive batches of dough without letting them raise in the bread machine. As soon as one recipe is done kneading, I'll stick it in a dough rising bucket and have the ingredients ready-to-go and start the next recipe (don't clean/wash the bread machine out, other than what you can remove with a spatula). About the time the first recipe is doubled in bulk in the dough rising bucket, the second recipe is ready to come out of the bread machine and go into the dough rising bucket (although I have a number of dough rising buckets of different sizes to use for marathon baking). I've done as many as 5 consecutive recipes doing this. I may have to retard some of the dough in the refrigerator, but I've done large amounts of baking for receptions using this method. One word of caution, although the large Zo can bake a 1-pound loaf, I'd suggest you bake it outside the machine for that small amount of dough. I baked a 1-pound loaf in the Zo when I first got it and we had a good laugh at the results. The one pound amount loaf ends up being an "odd" size (short and wide - not good for sandwiches or toast) since the bread pan is designed to accomodate double that amount. I don't think you can go wrong with either size Zo. -Grainlady

The evidence presented at the link Grainlady provided many years ago is convincing. To wit: "Bread and Butter" is a name given to the pickles by Mrs. Fanning's Pickles, when applying for a trademark. The story, true or not, given by the pickle company is that Mrs. Fanning made them from the cucumbers too small to sell and traded them to the grocer for bread and butter. This sounds potentially apocryphal, though the evidence is clear that the Fannings were the first to sell them, and that they were different from other sweet pickles; also that the recipe had been in the Fanning family for a couple of generations, so while they may have been unusual, they were probably not unique. The contemporary descriptions call them "sweet and sour". Something we'll never find evidence for is the likelihood that "sweet and sour" wasn't trademarkable for pickles, being just a descriptor in common use, so "bread and butter" having a similar assonance, and rhythm (even though different syllables), was put down on the form instead. If so, it would be clever, because bread and butter are a basic part of any old shopping list, so bread and butter pickles implies you should have pickles in your shopping basket as a matter of course. I can definitely see the marketing value of the name. I don't like sweet and sour pickles! Never have! I once accidentally bought a jar of Bubbie's and opened them before realizing. I call them "sugar pickles". They're not sour, just sweet. I like them as an alternative to a cookie. They go extremely well with chestnuts. :)