Success!!

I did it!


I have been making bread for about 30 years.  The last 15 years or so I have resorted to bread machines for this endeavor.  I have other things in life I want to do you see.  But once I started making bread, we simply could not eat any other bread.  And for that matter, we could not stop eating the home made bread.


I persevered for years measuring and kneading and hanging around to punch down and knead some more and then hang around to punch and knead again and then hang around to bake.  And oh dear lord, the cleaning up.


I had to get a bread machine.  It changed my life.  My life was coming back to me in increments.  My husband got in on the collection.  We discovered Good Will is a veritable farmland of bread machines - in working condition!  We had amassed three machines by now and yet, my heart still felt empty (and his belly was a teensy bit empty - 3 loaves a week was not quite enough).  I still didn't own a Zojirushi - the alpha and the omega of bread machines.


Meself: I just have to have it. 


Himself:  You already have three!!


Meself:  It is the best bread maker in the world. 


Himself:  You haven't thrown any bread away that you have ever made.


Meself:  It will never fail. 


Himself:  Lest you forget, I am in the appliance business.  Try harder.


Meself:  We will have healthy amazing tasty bread the rest of our lives. 


Himself:  We already have that.  Do I have to mention it is absurdly expensive??  We can go to Good Will for the next 30 years for the price of that one machine.


My arguments fell on fallow ears -- until Craig's List!!!  A hardly used Zojirushi for a 1/3 of the price of a new one. 


Yes, we drove 60 miles to get it.  And OK, I had to send it back to the company for repairs right away.  (Zojirushi is amazing!! They fixed it free!)


But, oh, my despair.  I could not bake a successful loaf.  It's been years.  Sure, we eat it.  It's always the last loaf of the week to get eaten. We don't talk about it.  It's just always there - every week.  A dry, tough, mostly crust, not fit for company, evil loaf of bread.


And then, in conversation the other day, someone said how great Zojirushi's are because they are programmable. 


Bombs burst in my head! I knew what it felt like to be punched down! I could actually change the settings!! I knew what was wrong.  I had read the manual an embarrassing number of times.  I just never put 2 and 2 together. 


Himself:  And that's news to you?


Behold - a Zojirushi whole wheat loaf of bread.