12 Breads of Christmas

Bread. The food of life.

I’ve been baking bread for my family for about 25 years. Every Christmas season I bake bread for my neighbors and friends as a way to thank them for enriching my life. This year I wanted to extend the good will I feel during the holidays to family and friends far away, as well as to all of the people I call friends through social media. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been baking like crazy to perfect some recipes to present to all of you in a fun and festive 12 Breads of Christmas series. I hope you’ll check back every day as I reveal a new bread recipe.

I began when my aunt gave me her old bread machine and a booklet with 25 bread recipes. I started with the standard white sandwich bread and branched out to wheat, multigrain, and eventually wild yeast sourdough. That little bread machine, for which I do not remember the brand, made those scrawny square loaves, which were eaten up in a single day. While my children were in school I baked one loaf a day, putting the ingredients in the bread machine at night before bed, setting the timer, and waking up every morning to the smell of fresh bread.

I wore that bread machine out in about two years. I upgraded to a Breadman Ultimate machine which could make rectangular loaves up to two pounds. Even with the larger loaves we still seemed to go through a loaf a day. Making bread was such a regular part of my routine that I was soon gifting loaves to friends and family for holidays and such. I exhausted the second bread machine after about 15 years and replaced it with an upgraded model of the same brand.

Some may say that I am not a true baker because I predominately use a bread machine. We won’t even go there. However, throughout my bread-making journey I’ve expanded my repertoire of baking experiences to include making bread completely by hand, or using my Kitchen-Aid stand mixer for the hard stuff. People bake for many different reasons. For some, it’s the process that draws them to the kneading board, while for others it’s the finished product. I am a product baker. A loaf of bread is a piece of art to me. Edible art. I am all about the perfect rise, scoring a beautiful design, the browning of the crust. The finished loaf.

Thus, I rely on my bread machine like professional bakers use their Hobart machines. I prepare the dough in the bread machine, test the consistency of the dough, then when it’s right I pull it out so the yeast can do its job. Depending on the type of bread I’m making, I work the dough with slaps and folds, shape it, give it a final rest and then score it before placing it in the oven. Sometimes I bake in my enameled Dutch oven, sometimes on a baking stone. Some of the recipes I’ve developed for the Twelve Breads of Christmas will bake in a standard loaf pan.

Baking gurus say to use only weighted measurements for bread or pastry. That was necessary before standard cooking measurements were developed. Yet many home bakers back in the days of yore didn’t have scales in the kitchen and the only measurements were their hands and some pottery vessels. Their breads still turned out because they learned how their dough should look and feel. I’ve baked using weighted measurements and I’ve baked using standard measurements and I can’t say I’ve ever seen a noticeable difference in the finished product.

I hope you’ll enjoy my 12 Breads of Christmas as much as I (and my husband) enjoy making them. Choose from the links below to view each day’s recipe.