homemade bread

I’m a bread lover—I mean I’m plumb foolish for bread!

At most meals, I’d rather have the bread than whatever else is served. I like biscuits, I like cornbread, I like rolls-I like bread!

When The Deer Hunter and I were first married Miss Cindy shared her sourdough starter with me and for a good long while I made sourdough bread.

Somewhere along the way Miss Cindy decided to get a bread machine and give it a try. After she got the hang of using the machine she found us one at a local thrift store and showed me how to use it. The bread machine came with a cookbook which has recipes ranging from regular sandwich bread to elaborate Danish pastries.

Miss Cindy wanted a basic bread for sandwiches, but one hearty enough to be served with a meal too. When none of the recipes from the booklet satisfied her she made up her own bread recipe.

Her recipe is so good I glued my hand written copy inside the cover of one of my cookbooks for easy access because I knew it would be my go to loaf bread recipe and all these years later I’m still making it.

You need:

  • 3 cups of unbleached bread flour (all purpose works too!)
  • 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour
  • 1/2 cup quick cooking oatmeal
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • 2 heaping tablespoons of peach or apple jelly (or 2 heaping tablespoons of sugar if you don’t have or don’t want to use jelly)
  • 1 1/2 cup water
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon yeast

The best thing about using a bread machine is you pour all the ingredients except the yeast in together (the yeast goes in a separate place) turn it on and forget it.

The bread machine Miss Cindy found for us is a Panasonic SD-YS200. Bread machines can be pricey, but by keeping an eye out at thrift stores and yard sales Miss Cindy has managed to nab several for friends and family at a good price. I’m still using the bread machine Miss Cindy gifted us with.

Once I add the ingredients, I choose the Basic Bread option which takes four hours. If I’m in a hurry or just want my bread faster I choose the Rapid Basic Bread option which takes three hours.

I’ve never tried it, but I’m sure Miss Cindy’s recipe would work well if you made it without the bread machine and went by a basic sandwich bread’s rise and bake times.

Once the bread is baked and out of the machine, I let it cool and then slice the loaf down the middle long ways so I end up with two smaller loaves.

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23 Comments

  1. Tipper, I used the 2 tsp. salt the recipe called for, but the bread seemed too salty to me. I just wanted to make sure that was right. I wonder if it would hurt to cut back on it next time? Thanks, Debra

  2. I’ve got celiac disease so I can only use gluten-free flours. I bought an all in one bread machine off walmart I really like it. I’m still very new to using a bread machine and finding GF bread recipes to use in my bread machine. My question is instead of using the whole wheat flour can I just add another 1/2 cup of my gluten-free flour instead of the whole wheat flour for me to make this in my bread machine on the gluten-free setting?

  3. Tipper,
    I bought a bread machine off Facebook Marketplace after watching your video on YouTube making this recipe. I didn’t realize there were different size machines. What capacity is yours? Mine makes up to 2 lb. Size loaves. I was afraid your recipe may make a bigger loaf than my machine can hold.

  4. I save recipes and title them as “Tipper’s recipe”! 🙂 This one really sounds good, but I am puzzled as to what you mean by…………. “The best thing about using a bread machine is you pour all the ingredients except the yeast in together (the yeast goes in a separate place) turn it on and forget it.” What is different about where the Yeast goes?

    1. Hi Betty,
      2 years later you get your answer! I wondered the same thing about the different place for the yeast. I think you just can’t mix it directly with the salt b/c salt will retard the action of the yeast. Put the wet stuff in first then the flour. Make a little well in the top of the mound of flour and add the yeast there. Then turn on your bread machine and forget about it.
      Anna

  5. There were only two breads in our Wise County, Va. home……biscuits Mommy made with white Lilly flour, hand mixed with a big lump of lard or Crisco , then buttermilk …pinched off, patted , put in an iron skillet. ….And for supper, corn bread with no sugar added. My mommy laughed when she came to my house where I was raising 4kids, three of them big ol sons…..I made lots of yeast breads…rye with caraway , whole wheat, Sally Lunn bread, white with poppy seeds atop, pizza dough…..Mommy laughed and said that I did not cook a thing like her! She’s been gone almost 16 years…. I video taped her making her biscuits the year before she died ….I have never watched it . It would break my heart.

  6. I’ve worn out two breadmakers now. Definitely my favorite appliance! I prefer to use it to make dough for things–dinner rolls, pretzels, pizza crust, etc. Even if I make a loaf of bread, I tend to do the last rise and bake in my oven because I’m not wild about the vertical loaf my machine makes.

  7. We have never tried to make bread like this, it sure does look like it would be good. It has always been biscuits, cornbread and store bought loaf bread for us. When in elementary school in the early 60’s, we had a cook in the lunch room that would make homemade yeast rolls from scratch for us. I have ate yeast rolls at different restaurants through the years but none have ever came close to being as good as the ones she made. I would give a pretty penny to get some like that now. The lunches we had at that school were a lot like food we would eat at home.

  8. How do you slice it so perfectly, Tipper? It sounds delicious! I’ll try it
    without the machine.

  9. I used to buy two pound loaves of Ingles bread. I didn’t eat it though. I don’t eat store bought bread! It has been ten years since I’ve eaten any. I bought it because this beagle came and took up with me. I fed him my table scraps and if I didn’t have any, I would crumble up that Ingles bread, moisten it with milk and feed him that. Then one day I found him dead in a neighbor’s yard. I couldn’t find any signs of trauma. I did notice his hair looked matted all over. Like he had been wet when he died. Anyway that’s the last bread I ever bought.
    I don’t eat enough loaf bread to justify a bread maker. I would rather eat buns or rolls than sliced bread anyhow. I am a crust man and buns and rolls are all crust. I often hollow the inside out of a bun before making a burger or a sandwich.
    I make a batch of ten or twelve buns at a time and freeze them. That way I can use them one at a time. You can freeze loaf bread too but you have to thaw all just to get two slices. You can pre-slice it but it freezes back together and you still have to thaw it all to get what you need.
    What I think I might do is make your recipe but instead of making a loaf I’ll make buns. I have all the ingredients except jelly but I do have sugar, or maple syrup or molasses.

  10. That looks really good, thanks for sharing the recipe ❣️ It’s oh, so pretty outside here today but my little white-haired weather man says rain☔️ tomorrow.

  11. Like you, I do love good bread. I’ve never tried a bread machine, but I may just start looking for one.

  12. I love bread too. My husband makes the best French bread rolls by hand. We had a bread machine, but since it was gathering dust, I got rid of it.

  13. Homemade (including bread machine) yeast bread pretty much spoils one for “light bread”. Doesn’t take but one batch to cause one to wonder, “Why did we ever start with light bread?” Well, in large part because bread making took a lot of time. Way back when, there was a laundry day, a baking day, a cleaning day, etc because those operations needed lots of time.

    We have a bread machine but use it maybe twice a year during the holidays. My wife makes yeast rolls not using the machine so we kinda gravitated away from it. Our daughter makes yeast bread all the time and has her guys ruined. We never did even began to use the full range of the machine’s capabilities, no fancy anything just workaday bread.

    Incidentally, about making bread, the hardest work for a mixer is mixing bread dough. If the motor is not powerful enough, trying to mix bread dough will finish off a mixer. The largest bread dough mixer I ever saw was a free-standing one about 6 feet tall with a 4 foot or so bowl. It was one the founder of Claxton’s fruit cakes used at the bakery in Richmond Hill, GA way back in Henry Ford’s day. The story was Mr. Ford was in and asked why bread production was so slow. The reason was there was only the one hand mixer to make the dough each time. So Mr. Ford bought and had delivered the big floor machine.

  14. Bread is wonderful but when one has Crohn’s disease, a really big offender is bread because of its high protein gluten. The worst on my system is pasta. You haven’t lived until you break out in a itchy rash covered in tiny blisters. The loaf recipe you’re sharing looks fantastic. I have a bread machine and keep my flour, corn meal and yeast in a short, galvanized steel sealed can to keep out bugs. It may be an eye sore in the kitchen but that’s the price the frugal baker is willing to pay. Homemade bread beats the crud out of store bought of which I swear I taste roundup in every perfumed slice as well as every cracker by the same company which apparently owns every cracker made in USA. Smh in utter disgust at the lack luster commercial food supply.

  15. I loved making that bread and I sure gifted a lot of it. Everyone loved it. I still have my last machine but I don’t make it any more, the loaves are so big it takes me too long to eat it! The machine I have is actually not my first one, it’s the second one…I wore the first one out!
    I never tried making it by hand, I’m sure it would work but the machine was just too convenient for me to try making it by hand!

  16. Yum, I make a lot of badic recipes in my bread machine, thry turn out great! I eill be trying this one toi

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