Preface
250 Best American Bread Machine Baking Recipes has been written for you, the person who cherishes homemade bread but can't remember life before your bread machine. We, too, can't get along without ours. First and most important, writing this cookbook has allowed two very good friends the opportunity to work together, in a business, doing work we love. We both enjoy the creativity of baking and the challenge of recipe development, and of course we love to eat.
Both professional home economists, we have university degrees in our field of study. Donna started Quality Professional Services in 1992 to develop recipes for small electrical appliances. Black and Decker was QPS's first customer. Recipes for the U.S. and Canadian markets were developed for Black and Decker's bread machines. Heather became a partner in 1994. Philips Electronics Ltd. asked QPS to develop recipes for the manuals of their two new horizontal bread machines. What a challenge! These machines have many new features and cycles including: Cake, Jam, Quick Bread, Rapid One-Hour Basic, Rapid Whole Wheat and Pasta. They bake two or three sizes of loaves with a choice of three crust colors.
As the home economists for Philips Electronics Ltd., and as the test kitchen experts for fermipan(reg) yeast from Lallemand Inc., we speak with many of you while managing the call center and answering toll-free customer service calls. We thoroughly enjoy helping answer your questions. We love the challenge of not knowing what difficulty or what interesting bit of information the next caller may have to offer. As spokespersons for Robin Hood Multifood's bread flours, we have had the opportunity to promote bread machine baking on TV.
We also published a bimonthly 12-page newsletter for bread machine owners -- called The Bread Basket -- which featured new recipes, bread machine reviews and lots of tips and techniques. Our newsletter subscribers told us they could never get enough bread machine recipes. And we often got and continue to get requests for particular flavor combinations that come from recipes belonging to our readers' mothers or grandmothers. Many have special memories attached to holidays and family celebrations. We have adapted these to the bread machine and have included many of these requests in the first chapter of this book.
Our training and professional values are tested daily as we attempt to satisfy and protect our customers and you, our readers. On one hand, we have the manufacturers for whom we do recipe development; on the other, we have you, the consumer, for whom we try to do our best by sharing our knowledge and expertise. Practicality is the keynote of our work.
We can assure you that all the recipes in this cookbook have been tested and re-tested to meet the highest standards of quality and appeal. Well over 2,000 pounds of flour, 72 tins of yeast, gallons of honey, pounds of cracked wheat, etc. went into testing these recipes. Each and every dough was measured, cut, re-measured; every rising timed and re-timed. The oven temperatures were checked, the baked dough tapped on the bottom, sides and top. We want to provide you the best possible recipes to guarantee your success and enjoyment using your bread machine.
We hope you'll enjoy this wonderful collection of recipes. We've created them just for you -- our fellow bread machine bakers.
Donna and Heather
