My sister and I gave our parents a bread maker for Christmas because we knew how much they love to eat Japanese white bread with raisins for breakfast. They usually get their loaves from Nijiya and other Asian supermarkets but those things aren’t cheap, so we thought the machine would be a pretty sound investment. According to my mother, a 5-pound bag of King Author’s bread flour makes exactly five loaves, and with a pack of yeast, sugar, powdered milk, raisins, butter and other ingredients, each loaf comes out to about $1.50 to $2.00. And the taste of the homemade bread right out of the oven is absolutely priceless.  Even the heavenly La Brea Bakery breads don’t even compare to these!

I am a bit of a purist when it comes to baking, especially break baking, so I didn’t really believe in the machine at first (using a machine to bake made me feel like it was cheating) but after tasting these freshly baked loaves, I might just have to jump on the bread maker bandwagon!

(Thanks, mom, for making me a loaf on my last visit home!) 🙂