Mixes and Some Special Breads Created from Them

When experimenting with the types of breads you can make in your bread machine, you may well want to taste the different commercial boxed mixes that are available. Although bread machine recipes, even from scratch, are only moments away from being mixed in the machine, some bakers like to use mixes. There are many brands and types of bread machine mixes available, some on supermarket shelves and some by mail order. Most small mills package some sort of bread machine mix made of their own flours, which is a real treat. All brands seem to offer homestyle or country white breads and hearty or honey whole wheat breads. Some, like Hodgson Mill and Eagle Mills, use stone-ground wheat. Most mixes include bread boosters like gluten, lecithin, vitamin C, and malted barley flour. Beyond these basics, the offerings vary from brand to brand. Some offer mixes for cracked wheat, honey wheat berry, nine-grain, herb and cheese, and some sort of cinnamon bread. There seems to be a wider variety of bread mixes available by mail order than on supermarket shelves. The King Arthur Baker’s Catalogue offers multigrain sunflower and maple whole wheat mixes. Williams-Sonoma has a good cinnamon-raisin mix in bulk and some sweet bread mixes to which you add your own spices with the eggs and milk. White mixes usually have a variation to make egg bread. Krusteaz and Fleischmann’s mixes use bleached flour, while others list unbleached flour. The mixes I tried did not list any preservatives.