We keep our bread machine out all the time. I've been making a raisin bread too, we keep it in the freezer and have it toasted. Lovely as a winter treat.
For colour and richness, I often add a raw egg to the liquid allowance. It boosts the protein content of the bread too, a good thing when trying to get more nutrition into a kid who eats bread and little else.
For aspecial treat I sometimes bake brioche using the bread machine to knead the dough. It's a sweet dough mix with some melted butter in it as well as eggs. I tip it out at the second rise stage and divide the mix in two, then put it into two fluted ring moulds. Glaze with beaten egg and bake in a hot oven. Unmould then turn it over. Glaze again (so the fluted part gets a lovely glaze on it) and bake for another 10 mins or so until the glazed side colours up.
I serve it still warm, with jam and whipped cream. It's a lovely afternoon tea treat when ravenous hordes of people arrive who need impressing. They cost a fortune in the shops but are cheap to make. And the smell of them baking is simply fabulous.
You can also use the same dough recipe to make croissants - roll the dough out, spread it with copped chilld butter, fold it up then roll it out again. Fold, roll. Keep it chilled to stop the butter form melting and mixing in. Finally roll it out into a circle, cut the cirle into 8 (pie fashion) and roll each sector up from the outside in, shaping it gently into a crescent shape with the point of the triangle just peeping out from underneath on the inside of the curve. Let them rise in the fridge overnight then bake first thing in the morning.
Yum!
Marg