For all you bakers out there who love to make your dough in a mixer, and then get in there with your hands, and powder it up like a baby’s bottom, have at it. I tried that once and I think I still have dough on the ceiling of my kitchen. All bread recipes at this site will be designed for a Bread Making machine.
I will give you the instructions according to my machine (Zojirushi BB-CEC20 2-pound Home Bakery Supreme Breadmaker) but your machine’s instructions might be different, so be sure to check your instruction manual.
Ingredients
This, like almost every recipe at this site, contains options. However, because we’re baking, some ingredients must be measured accurately, and they are: the flour, water, sour cream, egg (1), and baking soda.
- ⅛ cup Water
- ½ cup Sour Cream
- 1 Egg
- 2 cups All-Purpose Flour
- 1 teaspoon Celtic Sea Salt (finely ground)
- 1 teaspoon Cumin
- 1 teaspoon Garlic Powder
- 1 tablespoon Cheddar Cheese Powder
- 1 ½ tablespoons Sugar or Bocha Sweet
- ¼ teaspoon Baking Soda
- ¾ – 1 cup grated Sharp Cheddar Cheese
- 3 fresh Jalapeno Peppers, seeded and diced
- Hot Pepper (Ghost, Habanero, Arbol) flakes (Optional)
- 1 ½ teaspoons active dry yeast, for all bread machines
Notes
Don’t be tempted to add more salt. The cheese and cheese powder do that. The amount of jalapenos is up to you, but if you are adding them to make the bread spicier, you should know that baking does seem to cut the “hot” of jalapeno peppers. You can easily put a quarter cup to a half a cup diced jalapenos in this.
To give it an extra kick, you might want to sprinkle some of this on it: Flatiron Pepper Co – I Can’t Feel My Face. But be careful. It’s not called that name as a joke. Just a shake or two (or three is enough).
The cheese too can be increased. The original recipe called for a ¾ of a cup, but is that a packed up or a loose cup? We figured loose, so we put about a cup in it.
And I’ve never had garlic powder in my kitchen until I decided to bake breads. We use garlic like our home is surrounded by vampires. If you’re in my kitchen and ask, “Do you have any garlic?” the answer is “does a leopard have spots?” But when we checked with bakers they said once in a while fresh garlic is ok, but for the most part, you might want to use the powdered.
And as for the sugar, we’ve not completed our page on sugar replacements (yet), but for baking, there is nothing better than Bocha Sweet. It’s expensive, but as we say around here, “I’m worth it!”
It looks, tastes, and measures like sugar. It’s extracted (slowly) from a Japanese pumpkin (squash), and it’s got zero calories and a zero glycemic index. But again, for the price of two pounds of Bocha Sweet, you can buy 25 pounds of sugar at Walmart.
Are you worth it?
Oh, and when you buy flour, you might want to support a great company. King Arthur Flour has been 100% employee-owned since 2004, and we need to support employee-owned companies because they get a living wage, health care, and all sorts of benefits corporate owned companies can’t give unless forced by unions. Corporate owned companies pocket all that money that would take care of their workers.
The image here is of their top-of-the-line flour. I’ve just ordered 50 lbs so expect some new recipes soon.
They also carry a gluten free flour that, at least so far, is the best one on the market from all the reviews I’ve read. So that might be worth checking in to.
Directions (for my bread machine)
Measure out the flour by scooping it first with a big spoon and shaking it into a measuring cup, then skim the surface of the cup with a flat knife (object) back into the flour. This is to make sure you have the exact amount of flour, no more and no less.
Don’t put it in the bread maker yet. Put the water first.
Then don’t just dump the flour in, shake the bowl and let it gradually spill inside.
All of your other ingredients are added left and right of the center, against the edge.
And if you want a bite to it, this is where you add some sprinkles of I Can’t Feel My Face. But again, be careful. At my age, hot peppers are like sex: a little bit goes a long way, and by morning, I’m gonna be hurtin.
In the middle, you want to dig a little hole, but not down to the water, and that’s where you’ll put your dry active yeast.
That’s it. Just follow your machine’s instructions for basic bread with a medium crust and enjoy. Oh, you will enjoy.
Future Plans
We’re pretty sure that folks who’ve read our site know that our recipes are usually pretty healthy. Many are designed for diabetics and pre-diabetics. But once in a while, we’ll post something you can enjoy on the weekend, because “it’s not what you do on Saturday night that counts, but what you do the rest of the week.”
Having said that, over the next few weeks we’re going to be experimenting here. And this is because every low carb (keto) bread we’ve found is just gross. We are going to be adding Mangosteen Pericarp to our breads and out cookies and have diabetics test them, and send us their blood sugar readings. It’s really the only way we can know how to use the Mangosteen Pericarp. (You can click the link to read about it.) It’s pretty much tasteless, and we’ve had a few successes with it.
Take our Stiff Joe Froggers. One person who’s tried them have told us that they are the tastiest, most unique cookies she’s ever tried. It’s full of ginger, and full of spiced rum, and has a cup of molasses in the batch. Definitely not made for diabetics. But dammit! We’re going to try to make a batch for diabetics.
One thing we know beforehand is that adding mangosteen pericarp to our white breads is going to make them much, much darker. It’s the texture and the taste, and how much a couple slices will raise blood glucose levels we don’t know yet. By the end of this summer, we will know.