Bread Maker, RIP

Last time I was home I snagged my parents' old school bread machine. I had visions in my mind of my childhood days, when the smell of fresh baked bread wafting through the house was practically a daily treat. Since my parents carbed-down their diets, the machine had been sitting unused and unloved in my parents' basement.

So I brought it back to Nashville with me, and oh! Was I ever excited! I would be the bread queen, whipping up loaves of bread for gifts, kneading fresh pizza dough for dinner, experimenting with recipes and running 'round my kitchen in an adorable apron covered in flour.

Never mind that the machine was probably - and this is a conservative guess - ten years old. Never mind that it last functioned as a life-size stand-in for R2-D2. Together, we would still make beautiful bread.

And we did! I started with a beloved classic, some white Italian bread. Crusty on the outside, tender on the inside. Toasted and slathered with butter, it filled my breakfasts with its simple grained goodness.

I made another loaf of that. It was just as good.

Then I got crazy. I decided it was time for pizza dough. I bought sauce. I bought turkey pepperoni. I bought mozzarella. I was Miss Suzy Breakmaker. I was unstoppable!

The bread machine, alas, was not.

Halfway through the dough cycle, it abandoned its adorable side-to-side shuffle movement with gentle whirring, and began rocking wildly about while making a painful growling grinding sound. No amount of stopping and starting would aid its suffering.

Ben came home and gave a listen. The diagnosis was not good. A couple weeks later, he and my dad took it apart on the garage floor to scavenge for salvageable parts. Time of death, 11:42 am.

So rest-in-peace, my sweet old gal. Someday I might invest in a modern bread machine, but I'll always remember the good times we had. Specifically the cheddar cheese bread times.