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People who know me know that I love to make bread.  Like anything homemade, it's reassuring to know exactly what's going into the things you eat.  Plus, home cooking allows you to choose the quality of the ingredients rather than pre-made or restaurant meals, which at the very least usually means a LOT less sodium.

My bread maker had been virtually untouched for the entire three years that I was stationed in Hawaii.  Something about 100+ hour work weeks doesn't lend itself to a lot of home cooking.  Anyway, I finally broke out the bread maker, now that I have time to use it, and I realized that I've hardly made ANY of the recipes in the cookbook that came with the bread machine!  What better time to change that than the present?

So this was my attempt at "Mulit-Grain Cereal Wheat Bread," and it was a miserable fail.  The recipe called for 2 cups of 7-grain cereal, which is a lot of cereal for a 1.5 pound loaf.  I knew it as I was dumping in the cereal, but I figured that I'd trust the recipe, having never made it.  I also used less water than was required.  Here I was trying to outsmart the math first thing in the morning, so when it called for "3/4 cup and 3 tbsp lukewarm water," I tried to measure it all in the same measuring cup and added 3/4 cup + another 1/8 cup.  Wrong!  Note to self--don't try to outsmart the recipe first thing in the morning!

It would have been completely unrecoverable had I not cleaned out the residual cereal and reshaped the bread before the final rise cycle.  I'll probably chunk it and bring it into work tomorrow with a bottle of honey.

Fortunately I started my first attempt in the morning and had plenty of ingredients to make another.  This time I made sure to add the right amount of water and used 1 cup of cereal.  Let's see how this one comes out...