Shelter in Place: Bread Machine Basics

Like many of you, judging by how hard it is to find flour and yeast these days, we’ve taken the old bread machine out of the closet and put it back in the kitchen where it belongs, mostly as a way of entertaining ourselves while stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Supposing you do manage to score the basic ingredients, here are four home baking standbys to get you through quarantine: buttermilk white bread, French bread, buttermilk wheat bread, and pizza dough.

I’ve listed the ingredients in the order you use when putting them in the bread machine, and indicated which bread-making cycle you should select when starting your machine. The measures are for standard bread makers that produce 1- to 1 1/2-pound loaves. Individual recipes are printable, should you want to keep copies in your kitchen (I don’t know about you, but we hate referencing recipes on a tablet or phone because the screen always times out between steps … give us paper copies any day).