Bread Affaris

I bought myself a new toy, a bread maker, specifically Oster 2 pound Exressbake Breadmaker.
I probably confessed before that I'm not much of a cook.  Paul does most of the cooking here.  But sometimes I enjoy simple baking, like making cookies, banana breads etc.  Lately I've been wanting to make breads.  But after reading instructions online, I realized the whole process is not my thing.  Last year a student told me he got a bread machine in a thrift store and he loves it. Well, I had not seen a bread machine in the thrift store around here recently, so I finally decided to get one via Amazon.

I'm in love with that machine. It's so easy to make breads, pour ingredients in and press few buttons, voila, fresh bread in 3 hours or less. I've been making bread by following recipes faithfully and boy they're good, and my weight gain can prove that. And I got greedy, I wanted that out of oven loaf of bread. I wanted that shape and that crust of oven baking. I ended up combining few recipes online and made few modifications. I made Pesto Bread!

Still not convinced that I want to knead and the dough by hands, I used the bread machine for kneading the dough. And I did the rest by hand and baked it in the oven.

I made the Pesto Bread last week, and was only 80% happy with the result.  So I tried it again today with slight modifications, and now I'm a happy person eating my happy bread.

I'm so thrilled about this.  I love the bread.  I love pesto, so I know I'd love the bread no matter what.
By no means am I a food blogger, but I really want to share the pictures as I'm so proud of myself.

And this is what I did in case anyone is curious.

Ingredients for Dough:
1 1/4 cups of warm water
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 teaspoon of sugar
3 2/3 cups of bread flour
1/3 cup of shredded Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of active dry yeast

Ingredients for Pesto Filling
(I didn't measure, I just put things in food processor until the consistencylooked right.)
basil
olive oil
Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper
chopped walnut (too cheap to buy pine nuts this time.)

I put all the Ingredients for Dough in the bread machine according to the order above. Set machine on Dough cycle.

Once the dough is done and taken out of the machine:
1. divide the dough into 2 equal parts.
2. roll out each part into ~7 "x 12" rectangular piece.
3. spread pesto and sprinkle some Parmesan
4. roll the dough length-wise into a log.
5. twist up each dough log gently.
6. twist the 2 dough log with each other.
7. slit ~4" along each twist to expose a bit of the pesto filling
8. let it sit and rise for 30 minutes, and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
9. bake in 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then bake in 350 degrees for another 30 minutes.
10. cool the bread for 10 minutes before slicing (sadly I was too eager to wait that long, but take my advise, it's better to cool it a bit before slicing.)

2. roll out each part into ~7 "x 12" rectangular piece.

.

3. spread pesto and sprinkle some parmesan

4. roll up the dough length wise into a log.

5. twist up each dough log gently.

6. twist the 2 dough log with each other.

7. slit ~4" along each twist to expose a bit of the pesto filling

9. bake in 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then bake in 350 degrees for another 30 minutes. 

10. cool the bread for 10 minutes before slicing (sadly I was too eager to wait that long, but take my advise, it's better to cool it a bit before slicing.)