Bread and that

I bought a bread machine when I had a little baby or two, in the 1980's. I didn't know until a couple of days ago that what I had bought was the first bread machine introduced to the U.S. It was from an electronics catalog called DAK. It looked like R2D2, and I really liked it.

When I wore it out I got another machine, and years later another and I'm on my fourth bread machine. All this thinking came about because a friend tasted some of the bread (onion dill, the fanciest one I ever do—ingredients too expensive to ever sell commercially) and wanted to buy a machine.

I went to my online Consumer reports account to get a comparison chart on current machines, but there wasn't one.

I brought the photo, though, because I almost always set the machine to dough and do the last rise and the baking outside the machine. Partly because of the elevation where I am (over 5,000 feet above sea level), bread cooked in the machine doesn't rise long enough. Some new machines allow for extending parts of the cycles.

But anyway, because I'm used to doing them by hand and I like it, I thought I'd bring these to show, since I was thinking about it. These were baked in small mixing bowls. They're not the prettiest shapes ever, and I took them out of the pan too soon, but it seemed a good moment, five larger-than-expected loaves of onion dill bread.

correction a few days later: I had written "almost nearly" and I meant either "nearly always" or "almost always." sorry

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10/27/07 It's called "Drew's Favorite Onion Dill Bread"
http://www.xanga.com/jnbsmom/622943307/bread-baking.html
"Drew" is Drew Kaplan, who sold those first bread machines and had a very chatty cookbook with it. I still have two copies of it.
http://www.hungrymonster.com/recipe/recipe-search.cfm?Course_vch=Bread%20Machine&ttl=1&Recipe_id_int=27224