We visited some friends of ours last year and were intrigued with the bread making machine that they had. We tried some of the bread and were, quite honestly, blown away by how good it was.

The bread in Luxembourg is not really our cup of tea at all. It’s all so continental. My favourite bread back in the UK used to be the freshly baked farmhouse and granary loaves from Tesco.

So, we thought we would get one of them there bread machines ourselves and start bakin’ our own. A quick visit to the supermarket quickly revealed that bread makers are yet another example of where Luxembourg is trailing behind the UK in terms of what’s available (and, more importantly, what’s NOT). And this leads to another problem of being in Lux: online UK-based retailers that are unwilling to ship to other European countries. After much hunting we found one reseller that would ship, but they were out of stock of the model that we wanted. So we placed an order anyway and waited about a month before it arrived. But it was worth the wait.

Of course, there is no suitable flour in the supermarkets either – it needs strong flour – but luckily our favourite UK product shop has Hovis and Allinson flour (white, brown and wholemeal) and the right kind of yeast.

For a nice loaf, all it takes is:

Ingredients

1. A teaspoon of dried yeast
2. 400 g of flour
3. A teaspoon of salt
4. A tablespoon of sugar
5. A tablespoon of milk powder
6. 25 g of butter
7. 300 ml of water

Just dump that lot into the machine, switch it on and get a nice loaf within 2 hours. It also has a raisin and nut dispenser that you can fill with whatever you like and it drops it into the mix at the appropriate time. I like to put dried cranberries in, but Freya makes me pick them out again. It’s also nice with mixed seeds and pine nuts. You can also program it to have the loaf ready for 8 am, so you get up to the smell of freshly baked bread. Lovely.

Set the controls

We make a loaf pretty much every other day and wouldn’t be without it now.