A thirteen year-old girl in Minnesota wrote and said, "How come when my mom makes bread in her bread machine, it always turns out like hard little moonstones but when she uses your bread mixes, it's light and fluffy."

If you are looking for a light and fluffy bread from your bread machine, this is it. This bread will come from your bread machine as light and moist and fluffy as some of the packaged commercial loaves from the store. It is soft enough to be your kids' favorite and you'll feel good serving it--a wholesome homemade bread without the preservatives and hydrogenated fat.

Not only is this bread light and fluffy, it has a better flavor than most commercial loaves. The secret is in the dairy. We use far more milk, sour cream, or buttermilk in our breads. In this bread, we've added a generous amount of buttermilk to give you just the right combination of tangy buttermilk and sweet dairy milk. See if you don't agree--this is the best buttermilk bread you have ever tasted.

Each package contains four mixes. Each mix makes a 1 1/2 pound-sized loaf. (Butter or margarine is not included. Yeast packets are enclosed.)

Hints, Tidbits, and Suggestions

What is buttermilk anyway? It is the skim milk that was left after our grandparents churned butter from cream. What we buy today from the grocer is a cultured low fat milk product. Most food producers use a dried version of the same thing but there are hundreds of variations available. We investigated many and tried several before settling on the cultured skim milk product that we wanted to use in our mixes. Our criteria? We wanted excellent keeping qualities and that characteristic buttermilk tang.

If you make this bread in your bread machine, water temperature is critical. Please use a thermometer to measure water at exactly 80 degrees. A ten degree difference in water temperature can double the growth rate of the yeast. These bread mixes are satisfaction guaranteed when you use a thermometer.

Ingredients: Enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, and folic acid), buttermilk (nonfat dry milk, dry cultured skim milk), sugar, salt, yeast (yeast, monostearate), and dough conditioner added for better baking (wheat flour, dextrose, soy flour, calcium salts, dicetyl tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides, ethoxylated mono- and diglycerides, soy lecithin, ascorbic acid, L-cysteine monohydrochloride, fungal enzymes, azodicarbonamide, and calcium iodate). This product contains wheat, soy, and dairy products and may contain traces of eggs, peanuts, or tree nuts.