Sally, Baking with Julia is one of my favourite cookbooks. I use her recipe for French bread and it is her recipe I use for Croissants and the Pain au Chocolate. I can highly recommmend both recipes. If you are really in the mood for baking you can't go wrong with the croissants. Make half croissants and half Pain au Chocolate. They freeze well too. I know that there are a few more recipes in that cookbook that I have made, but unfortunately, Moe already boxed up all my cookbooks so I'm without any cookbooks until after we get moved. Or until I have at least 80 feet of bookshelves built. LOL! Ann

Shambo, on Amazon's home page--at the very top of the screen next to where it will say 'Shambo's Amazon.com', click on 'Today's Deals'. The first set of 'deals' will be the 'Gold Box Deal of the Day.' Just below the Gold Box Deal will be the Lightning Deals. There will be a bunch of these limited time deals...scroll across to see all the current ones and upcoming ones. They have a time limit on claiming the deal & completing the purchase. I think it's a couple of hours but you'll see that when you click on an item & add it to your cart. Another tip...when you get to the Lightning Deals, look over on the right hand side of the screen--Click on 'Sort by Category' to hone in on your area of interest (vs having to scan thru a bunch of junk you have zero interest in.) Yesterday, there were a bunch of small appliance deals (Zo, Panasonic, Cuisanart, etc.)--not so much today. :-( Anyway, happy hunting.

Have been using a bread machine for several years. Flour, buying a bag or two when it's on special at just under $9.00 for 22 lbs. (10 kg), whole wheat costs some more and I usually use it for about a quarter of the mix: 4 cups makes about a 2 lb. loaf. I get a pound block of yeast for $5.00 and, at a teaspoon and a half per loaf, lasts forever .... well, more than a year, if deteriorating memory serves. Tablespoon of sugar and teaspoon of salt don't cost much. Recipe calls for 1.5 cups or slightly less of water; I use just under 1/4 cup 10% cream (often get on special at about $2.00 per just over a quart), a little under half a cup of 2% milk ($3.18 for 4 litres, 3.85 of which make a U.S. gal., on seniors' day at one store, I often manage to arrange that) and just under 3/4 cup of water ... which I haul in jugs from the city. Without having done careful cost checking, I've figured about 50 - 75 cents per loaf, and it's hard to get a 1.5 lb. loaf here for under about $2.25 - more likely up closer to $2.75 - 3.00. I don't figure that it takes a lot of power - my house, occasional use in the barn, and landlord's shop have been costing a couple of dollars or so either side of $100.00 per month usage in recent years. I've been having some rather bad turnouts lately, not rising enough - think maybe I'd better get another pkg. of yeast tomorrow to see whether that fixes the problem. I had not opened the last one for a while, and the rats dug a hole in the corner, so think that it started to deteriorate then, and it was some time before I began to use it. I think that there are some loaf pans around here, from step-aunt's days, so I may start to use them when I find them: I've used a pie-plate-shaped aluminum throw-away pan, but am not enthused about the resulting shape ... getting old and preferring uniformity of shape and size, slice to slice, maybe? This "Baker" hasn't been accused of being half-baked in some time: that's for when the power goes off, half way through, I guess. ole joyfuelled ... with a bit of help from a slice o' bread, whether home-made or not

We had a nice sunny day today, late morning and afternoon. Did some running around, so never did try the bread manually. When I mentioned setting it in the sun.....I meant the sun streaming in through the window. (in winter I get full sun, summer.....no sun in my apartment). Like Cynic, I preheat my bread-machine pan with hot water and heat up the milk in the microwave. I've read that the light bulb in the oven is all it takes to make bread rise, but that's hard to believe. But what do I know. Even if I never do remember to bake it in the oven, that's fine with us. We love the bread out of the machine. Hole and all. lol Hmmmm dinner rolls, though. That's a possibility! Oh, how much is 2 packets of yeast (as per the recipe above). I buy my yeast in bulk and put 2 1/4 tsp of yeast in my machine.