Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tom Lacalamita is the author of four bestselling cookbooks, the James Beard Award–nominated The Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook, and The Ultimate Pasta Machine Cookbook, The Ultimate Espresso Machine Cookbook, and The Ultimate Pressure Cooker Cookbook. He is a regular guest on QVC and is vice president of the Bread Machine Industry Association. He lives on Long Island with his wife and daughter.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Tom Lacalamita's The Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook showed how easy it was to have freshly baked, delicious, and nutritious bread anytime. Now comes The All-New Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook: 101 Brand-New, Irresistible, Foolproof Recipes for Family and Friends, which presents recipes suitable for making 1 1/2- and 2-pound loaves, using the new ingredients now readily available.

Here you will find mouth-watering recipes for Sourdough White Bread and Sweet Bread. Imagine the sights and smells of Cinnamon-Raisin Bread and Cornmeal Honey Loaf coming hot from your bread machine. There are also recipes for traditional favorites such as French Bread as well as crowd pleasers such as Black-Olive-and-Rosemary Bread and Coconut-Pecan Coffee Cake. And it's so easy! Just add the ingredients, push a button, and imagine the compliments you'll get from your family and friends, as if you'd worked long hours in a hot kitchen!

The All-New Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook offers the whole range of breads, from white to rye. For the diet conscious there is information on gluten-free breads, and for parents there are lots of family- and kid-friendly breads and treats, including Peanut-Butter-and-Jelly Bread and Funny as a Monkey Chocolate-Crumb Pull-Apart Bread.

This is the new ultimate bread machine cookbook for the new ultimate bread machine cook!

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

The All New Ultimate Bread Machine Cookbook

Fireside

Introduction: Bread Machines: East Meets West

Automatic bread machines, one of the most popular home appliances to be introduced in years, were originally developed in Japan for Japanese consumers. Although rice has been, and remains, the staple starch in the Japanese diet, bread boutiques and specialty bakeries with European-sounding names began popping up all over Japan in the 1970s, as Japan began to experience an economic boom. Young Japanese were finding the Western breakfast of bacon and eggs with orange juice and bread and rolls to be more convenient and to their liking than a bowl of rice porridge with pickled vegetables. Unfortunately for the Japanese housewife, her family only likes very fresh bread, so she has to get up early to go out every morning to buy the family's breakfast bread. That was true until electrical engineer Shin Ojima was finally able to manufacture his invention, a totally automatic bread machine. After many false starts, Ojima had convinced a Japanese appliance manufacturer of the merits of this revolutionary appliance, and the first automatic bread machine appeared in Japan in 1987.

Even at prices exceeding four hundred dollars, automatic bread machine sales took off, and more than 1 million units were sold in less than twelve months. This success was to be short-lived since, within a year, the bottom fell out. Most Japanese live in very small apartments that have sliding, paper-covered partitions for walls. Since most people wanted to have their bread ready in the morning, they would place the ingredients in the bread machine, and set the programmable timer before going to bed in order to have a loaf of fresh, hot bread waiting for them when they awoke. Well, imagine trying to sleep cuddled up to a bread machine. Between the noise and aroma, many Japanese families found it difficult to sleep and, thus, abandoned the idea of homemade bread by putting the machines out with the trash. Fortunately for Japanese manufacturers, the United States and Canada presented a large, untapped market, ready and waiting for such an appliance.

The first bread machines reached North America in time for Christmas 1988. Originally retailing for more than $400, they have since dropped in price dramatically, while the demand has risen steadily, affording millions of people the opportunity to make delicious, wholesome bread with the push of a button.

Who Uses a Bread Machine?

Early on, the average bread machine purchaser was fifty-five to sixty-five years old, and somewhat affluent. They were financial risk takers, who had the expendable income to purchase the latest and newest gadgets on the market. With the downsizing of corporate America at the beginning of the nineties we also saw many men from this age group, forced out of the work force with incentive retirement packages, picking up bread machine baking as a hobby or as an introduction to cooking.

Since their introduction over ten years ago, bread-machine retail prices have dropped to under one hundred dollars, which has initiated a change in who uses them. For the most part, today's consumer is a thirty- to thirty-nine-year-old married woman, with children, who works outside the home. The bread machine allows her to make homemade loaves of bread for brown-bag lunches, or to supplement prepared takeout meals from the local supermarket or fast-food restaurant with a wholesome loaf of homemade bread.

Bread: The Key to a More Healthful Diet

In 1992, after many years of research and planning, the U.S. government redefined the four basic food groups and introduced the Food Pyramid. Complex carbohydrates, which consist of grains and cereals, are now the foundation of the pyramid. After years of being told that complex carbohydrates were high in calories, we are now advised that, in order to lower the incidence of serious illnesses like cancer, heart disease, and diabetes, we should increase our consumption of complex carbohydrates by 50 percent, and substantially reduce the amount of animal protein, fats, and sugar in our diet.

Even in light of all the documented studies, obesity, which can lead to hypertension, is presently a national crisis. In 1997, an eating plan from the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension clinical study (DASH) was released. Funded by units of the National Institutes of Health, the DASH diet, similar to the Food Guide Pyramid, also recommends that the bulk of our diet come from grains and grain products (at least seven to eight servings a day), with reduced intake of meats, poultry, and fish. The study also recommends an increase in foods rich in sources of iron, magnesium, potassium, protein, and fiber.

After years of a meat-and-potatoes diet and, more recently, that of fast food, eaten by so many young Americans, we are faced with the dilemma of learning how to increase our intake of carbohydrates and, at the same time, maintain an appetizing diet. That's where your bread machines comes in handy.

Since bread derives at least 60 percent of its calories from carbohydrates, it is a healthful, filling food product, usually low in fat and cholesterol and should be a fundamental part of every diet. By using your automatic bread machine, you can make an endless variety of healthful and nutritious breads for yourself, your family, and your friends.

The diverse and varied recipes in this book are designed to have a broad appeal, with everyone in mind. There are recipes that contain zero milligrams of cholesterol, with fat limited to only that contained in the flour. While other recipes, like brioche, are substantially higher in fat and cholesterol, they are still surprisingly lower in fat than other baked goods like cakes, pies, and pastries. Nevertheless, the key to a well-balanced diet is variety and moderation.

Why a Bread Machine?

For hundreds of years, housewives were responsible for baking their family's daily bread. It was a ritual that took at least two days: one day to make the dough and heat the wood-burning oven, and the next to bake the risen loaves. The process was labor intensive, performed exclusively by hand and took from early morning to late in the day. Naturally, enough bread was baked at one time to last a week. The industrial revolution in the late 1800's, a shift in society from a rural to a more urban lifestyle, dictated a change in cooking and eating practices. Bread baking started to become more commercial, with city dwellers buying bread on a daily basis from their neighborhood bakery. Home baking became a hobby rather than a necessity, with a cherished recipe from the old country prepared on occasion for holidays or special events.

Over the course of time, home bread baking declined even further as more women entered the work force and scratch cooking took a back seat to prepared foods and baked goods.

When bread machines were first introduced, it would have been anyone's guess what kind of popularity they would achieve. Even though nothing could be more simple than carefully measuring ingredients and pushing a button, why would people want to spend time and money on a machine to make bread when they could buy acceptable, if not very good, bread at their local supermarket or bakery? With total sales over 20 million, it is obvious that the bread machine has been well received. At the risk of oversimplifying the reasons, we can easily assume that in this fast-paced world of late...