Breadmaker Bread

I've had my breadmaker for a while. But haven't used it in years. I decided to give making my own bread a try for a few reasons: to try and save money on bread, and because I love how my house smells while it's baking. I found a recipe that I liked and then went out and bought the ingredients. I even calculated how many loaves of this recipe (assuming I liked it) I could get from my ingredients to calculate my cost savings on bread.

Here's the breakdown:

King Arthur 100% Whole Wheat Flour $4.04--can get 12.67 loaves

King Arthur Bread Flour $4.04--can get 15.2 loaves

Flaxseed Meal $3.45--can get 17 loaves

Yeast--$.50 per packet--1 packet per loaf


That's all the stuff I had to buy. The recipe also called for honey, butter, water, and salt. But I had those ingredients so I did not include those in my costs.

I bought the 'King Arthur' brand of flour because I heard it was good for baking bread and it was on sale. (It's usually $6.50!). If I buy the Pillbury brand of flours (which I'd probably do next time)-- those were $2.55 each, so my cost saving would be more.

I took the amount I spend on ingredients minus the yeast--11.53--and divided it by the lowest number of loaves I'd get using up these ingredients--12--and it comes out to about $.96 per loaf. Add the yeast packet to that and it comes to $1.46 per loaf.

The bread I usually buy from the grocery store is the 100% Honey Whole Wheat by Sara Lee. That usually runs me about $3.30 a loaf. So, my cost savings per loaf is $1.84. I'd say that's pretttttty good.

But now let's get to the bread. I found this recipe online. I chose one with flaxseed because it adds more protein, fiber, and other gooood stuff.

Honey Whole Wheat and Flaxseed Bread

1 1/8 cups warm water (110 degrees)
1/4 cup honey, warmed in microwave
3/4 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/4 cups bread flour
1/4 cup flaxseed meal
2 tbsp. melted butter
2 1/4 tsp. active dry yeast (1 packet)

Add ingredients to bread machine in the order written. Wheat cycle, light color setting. On my bread machine, the wheat setting takes 3 hours and 40 minutes.
And now here's my finished product.

Here's my first problem. Is the top of the bread supposed to be sunken in like that?




Here's the side view.



Here's the handy dandy bread machine bread cutter thing and electric knife, courtesy of the mother a long long time ago. Fortunately, I didn't throw either of these out, even though I'm sure I've thought about it before, as they take up room in my little cabinet space.



Here we are to problem #2. The thing inside the bread maker that kneads the dough and all that came out into my bread when I took my bread out. Does this always happen? It make it awfully difficult to cut once I got to this part.




And here is the sliced finished product. Even with the handy dandy bread machine bread cutter thing, it was a little difficult to slice the bread evenly.



And my one last complaint. I thought the crust of the bread was a little hard. Is it always like this? I feel that this bread wouldn't be good for sandwiches, which is what Josh and I use bread for the most. The crust is hard, and the inside is kind of crumbly. Therefore, my cost savings making bread over buying it might not come into play as I might have to go out and buy some bread now.

If you make bread--can you tell me if I did something wrong, or if this is what bread maker bread is usually like?

I did already eat a piece and it was definitely good, just not what I thought it was going to be.