Pizza + Bread = Awesome

Here's the husband with another bread-making post.

--The Faudie

I've noticed that I tend to blog about three basic food groups: pizza, bread and dessert. So imagine how pleased I am that I can now feed two of these three cravings with one recipe from The Bread Machine Cookbook II:

Pepperoni Bread
1 C water
1 1/2 T olive oil
3/4 t sugar
1/2 t salt
1 t dried oregano
1/2 t garlic powder
1/2 t dried basil
1 C whole wheat flour
2 C bread flour
1 1/2 t yeast
3/4 C diced pepperoni

1. Place ingredients into bread machine in the order suggested by the machine's manufacturer.
   
2. Select the Raisin, Sweet, Wheat or Basic option on the machine, then start the cycle.
   
3. Add pepperoni at the beginning of the second kneading cycle.

Yield: One 1-pound loaf

Nutritional Info
Not provided.

The Husband's Futzings
We added vital gluten and substituted a heaping 1 1/2 teaspoon of "Italian seasoning" (basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme) for the oregano and basil.

The boy, who's the real pepperoni fan in the family, was just as eager as I was to try out this recipe, so we prepared it together. In all honesty, he did most of the work. In addition to measuring out most of the ingredients, he programmed the bread machine and he diced the pepperoni all by himself. I just tried to keep the mess to a minimum. Oh, and I put the lid back on the bread machine after he somehow managed to remove it. (Don't worry, no damage was done to the machine--it looks like he took it off the way it was intended.)

Nicely diced pepperoni, don't you think?

I'm not sure how to describe the final product except to say that it's very, very good, dependent, I'm sure, upon your fondness for pepperoni. While it was baking, the bread had the aroma of a pizza-flavored snack cracker (no doubt due to the spices involved), but the final product really has a lot of pepperoni flavor. Again, your enjoyment of the bread is going to depend a lot on your fondness for pepperoni.

Yummy pepperoni bread

The boy and I, we like pepperoni, and we like pepperoni bread.

We like it a lot.