Bring Out Your Bread

Lo oh so many years ago (at least 20) we got our first bread maker. One of those trendy home appliances that newlyweds register for, use once at best, and then collects dust until the mother of all garage sales. Not us. We like to buck trends. And when I say us and we I don't mean me (as it has been firmly established who is the baker in this bunch). Anyway, ours was from a weird little electronics company called DAK - literally a guy and his garage workshop in California, just not the famous one. It looked like an R2-D2 prototype and came with a recipe book that included a dandy called simply enough - Pizza Bread. The machine long gone, replaced with a fancier Williams-Sonoma model, the recipe endures. The common ingredients for bread plus pizza sauce, cheese and cured meat(s) of choice. Throw it all in and in a few short hours you have a tasty orange loaf of goodness that pairs well with a big green salad. Always eaten warm, none ever left over or thrown away.

[Reader's Note: please employ a proper English accent while enjoying the following]
Where to begin? Oh, right, with another post about something uniquely British. 1975's Monty Python and the Holy Grail is, simply put, the holy grail of all movie quotes.  What is your quest? What is your favourite colour? Who is this who is so wise in the ways of science?  It's only a flesh wound. We are the Knights who say Ni. Where, behind that rabbit? The number is three.You and all your silly English Knnnnnniggits. Was it an African Swallow or  European Swallow? And of course, my all time favourite: Bring out your dead/but I'm not dead yet scene. The list goes on and on. I remember seeing the film in 1979 or 80 on my brother-in-law's state of the art VCR (replete with corded remote control) and being doubled over with laughter. So contagious was the dialogue, that I can ever recall riding around in some guy called Tim station wagon (that sat three "safely" in the front seat) listening to the soundtrack on 8-track, which of course is typically American. 39 years since it's release (okay, that's a hard number to swallow, African or European) it is a cornerstone of universal pop culture - and certainly not dead yet.

The Recipe:

Special Equipment: Bring out your bread (machine)

1 package yeast
1 tsp sugar
3 cups Better for Bread flour
1/2 cup sliced pepperoni
1/2 cup cooked italian sausage
1/2 cup whole black olives
1/4 cup mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
1 egg
1 cup pizza sauce
1 tblsp olive oil
1 tsp whole fennel seed
1/8 tsp black knight pepper
1 tsp oregano
3 tblsp hot water

Use all ingredients at room temperature, except the hot water of course. Place everything in bread machine pan in the order listed. Select white bread and start.