Portugese Sweet Bread (1½ lb loaf bread machine recipe) .

I am beginning to feel like the gods have it out for me! First the plumbing under the garage slab broke. Then we discovered a leak in the pipes under the house -- the ones in the walls. Then the heater went out. All of this in a week's time. Yesterday my phone quit working. It has all my appointments and contacts. I want to crawl in bed, pull up the covers, and stay there until the world makes a few trips around the sun! I was really looking forward to some "downtime" the weekend, instead I have to add a trip to the phone service center to my weekend chores. So many things have failed around me. One thing that has never failed is this recipe for Portuguese Sweet Bread. I make it in my Breadman bread maker. I hope it works as well in other machines.

1 cup milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup white sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups white flour
1 Tablespoons gluten
2½ teaspoons dry yeast

Add ingredients in the order suggested by your manufacturer. Select “sweet bread” setting.

Note: I use the bread machine to make the dough (dough setting) and punch the dough down and shape it by hand. Another thing I do is use Bible ingredients when I make communion bread, replacing some of the sugar with honey and replacing about 1/2 cup of the white flour with barley flour.