My favorite kitchen appliance…

This is truly one of the loves of my life, my Zojirushi Bread Machine!!  Now you may be asking what a bread machine has to do with my blog about crafts??  Here’s how things work in my house:  The more $$ and time I save in my day to day routine=the more $$ and time I have for crafts.  So my Zojirushi becomes my best friend because it saves me time and money!!

I have been using a Zojirushi for 4 years now, and I have not bought a regular loaf of bread in 4 years!!  I usually make at least 2 loaves a week, most of the time it is three or four.  We make 1 that is whole wheat, and 2 that our white.  And we have made a lot of Gluten Free bread loves too.

So if a hearty, healthy bread loaf from the store costs $2.50, and our family eats 3 loaves a week, that means we spend $390 a year on bread.  There are just five ingredients in the bread that we make…

And here’s what it looks like when it is done…

It is a 2 pound loaf and you can adjust the settings for what type of crust you like (light, medium, dark).  We use an electric knife to slice it up.

Look at this yummy bread!!!

I love that it takes me 5 minutes or less to throw the ingredients in and then I have hot bread 2 hours later.  You can also use the timer and put the ingredients in the night before and then wake up to fresh, hot bread in the morning!!

So now that I’ve told you how great it is, I’ll tell you the price—it runs about $270, although I saw it on Amazon yesterday for $230.  I know sounds pricey, but it has been worth the money we’ve saved on buying store bread and I love that we always have fresh, homemade bread.

We’ve also made apple-oat bread, and chocolate chip bread that were really yummy.

The other function that we love, is that it makes great pizza dough in 45 minutes!!  And great cinnamon roll dough!!

I found a great breadstick recipe for my machine from Cooking on Clover Lane and so now we make them all the time too. 

Speaking of bread, I need to go make some…