Bread Machine White Bread (Garlic Parmesan Herb)

This homemade bread recipe creates a 2 pound loaf that will fill your house with a wonderfully inviting aroma as it bakes. Of course, it's delicious too, and a great bread to serve alongside lasagna, spaghetti, or soup, though this tasty bread can be the finishing touch for almost any family dinner. This Italian-inspired bread follows the method of a basic white loaf bread machine recipe. It uses water, active dry yeast, olive oil, salt, sugar, and bread flour. This type of wheat flour has more gluten than all-purpose flour, so the bread gets a great rise and crumb. The ingredients for flavouring the bread are simple as well. Garlic adds a nice contrast to the Parmesan cheese, and fresh herbs ensure that it's delightfully flavourful. While the recipe was designed for fresh oregano, chives, a little basil and rosemary, you can use any combination of herbs you like. Dried herbs are also an option. While making bread in a bread machine, make sure to consider:

- The proper way to measure flour using measuring cups is to aerate it first. This is done either by sifting flour, or aerating it by fluffing it up and whisking it well, then spooning it into the measuring cup, then carefully removing any excess flour with a knife. If you just stick that measuring cup in the bag of flour and scoop some out, you will get a lot more flour than what the recipe calls for. Do aerate the flour, or you will end up with dry dough.

- Use bread flour, not regular all-purpose flour. Bread flour contains a higher percentage of gluten than regular all-purpose flour. Using bread flour will produce taller, less dense loaves. If you use all-purpose flour (which has smaller percentage of gluten than bread flour), your loaves will be flatter and denser.

1⅓ cups water, lukewarm
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
3 Tbsp. fresh or 1 Tbsp. dried herbs, such as; basil, chives, oregano and rosemary
1 tsp. sea salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
4 Tbsp. Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
4 cups bread flour
1 (¼ oz) pkg active dry yeast (2¼ tsp.)

Add the water, olive oil, garlic and herbs to the bread pan.

Add salt, sugar and cheese evenly over the wet ingredients. Then add the flour 1 cup at a time ensuring that it is is placed evenly across the wet ingredients.

Make a small indentation on top of the flour and make sure it does not touch wet ingredients. Add yeast to the hole. It is important that the yeast does not come into contact with any ingredient except the flour.

Recommended Settings:
Cycle: Quick or Rapid
Loaf: 2 lb
Crust: Medium

When bread is done, remove the bread pan using oven mitts. Turn over the bread pan and shake it to release the loaf. Let the loaf cool on a wire rack for about 30 minutes before slicing.

Insert the bread pan into the bread machine, press it down to lock in place. Close the lid and plug the bread machine in.

Cook's Notes:

• Resist the temptation to slice the bread right away. The steam trapped by the crust is still baking the bread, inside and releasing that too soon can result in slightly underbaked or crumbly bread.
• The bread will keep for a few days when stored in a bread box or airtight container at room temperature. If you have too much bread or want to bake a second loaf, freeze the bread for up to a month.
• If you don't have bread machine yeast, you can use active dry yeast, but it needs to be dissolved in water before being added to the machine.
• When your bread machine has been kneading for a few minutes, check the dough. If it seems too stiff, add a little bit of water and continue checking until it seems soft enough. If too wet, add more flour in small amounts until it seems to be soft yet not sticky.