We love to wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread. We make a loaf every day... well almost every day. Somewhere between 100 to 200 loaves per year, since 1993. On this page we share our favorite recipe. Here is what we a striving for... chewy texture that has whole wheat flavor but not too heavy, lots of nuts and raisins left whole throughout, and a carbo/protein/fat balance in the guidelines of the Zone approach to sports nutrition (40/30/30).

Mark is the baker. He dumps the ingredients into the breadmachine at night. One problem is that measuring everything out takes concentration, which is something lacking at the end of the day. More than once the yeast has been left out. Once no water was added. That created the worst result. A solution that we have adopted is to measure out the ingredients to make 1-2 weeks worth of bread all at one time. We leave out the wet stuff and yeast. The stuff for each loaf goes into a paper bag awaiting its time to grow and bake.

Another problem with this "dump everything in at once" approach is that the raisins and walnuts often get smashed up beyond recognition. To do this recipe right in the breadmachine requires dumping these fragile ingredients in halfway through the bread cycle. This optimum time occurs in our house around 3AM, and no one wants to get up to do this. If Mark had more free time, he would like to make a robotic breadmachine accessory that would dump raisins and nuts into the mix a the right time. The plans for this robot project are given below. Mark would build it, but he doesn't have the time. Can you help us make this project come to life?