Of bread and Kitchen Aid ...

As part of the wedding list, we received a fantastic and long sought Kitchen Aid (KA for us). Here it is on the left after it survived kneading the dough for our brownish tomato bread of last Sunday.
As you see we went original, not red or metallic ... but cream colored. Which is interesting since we will also receive (again from the list) a kind of rainbow Alessi coffee machine, we have the bluish Alessi boiler and a granite Nespresso ... a colorful kitchen ... still it looks quite nice.
It was not our first bread trial with the KA and we have been making bread for a long time (even if not often). Elke uses the classic do all-in-one-day dry dough approach and I use the modern do-it-in-more-days wet dough. In both cases we all know the annoyance of kneading and kneading ... enough to get it well proofing. Well the KA solved everything! It makes bread making easy, cake making very easy and everything else a breeze. And above all ... the kitchen is amazingly clean at the end !!!! So, here I am sharing with you like in a journal our last successful trial of making bread ... this time nicely flavored and almost redding in color!!

Let's start from what we put int he bowl. We used half white and brown flour (250g each). Instant yeast (5g) ... and despite what everybody says, I did learn from my wet dough days that instant yeast is simply fantastic! Usual salt (5g) and warm water (280ml) ... but also finely chopped sun dried tomatoes (16) and a couple of spoons of their oil (2tbsp) !!! Yes, this was simply delicious to add. The KA simply made the entire procedure simple ... from mixing the dry ingredients (see above) with the flat beater to the following kneading the dough (see below) with the water and oil added to it.

And it went pretty fast too .... did it grow in the first proofing. Oh yeah !!!! This is what came out after the kneading (I believe it was 10 minutes overall from flour to dough).

This is the result after a bit more than half an hour of proofing !!! (forgive the disgusting Ikea yellow cloth we used as cover ... ;-)

And it grew even more in the second proofing inside a baking tin ...

And finally ... or this post gets really too long and boring, I present you the loaf after half an hour baking at 200C (where we use the water spraying trick used for wet doughs) and the sliced version ... well we are now enjoying the bread for our sandwiches this week ... yes, poor us .. this is our lunch. Everyday sandwiches ... but this time they are tastier!!