They say nothing comes close to freshly baked homemade bread. I usually bake about 2-4 loaves of fresh bread a week and I have been doing it for several months now. With the use of a KitchenAid™ mixer, bread making is simple and fast. The photo on the right shows a finished product. When I started rising the dough, the dough was just a little more than 1/3 the depth of the loaf pan. From my experience, you would get nice results if you follow some of these tips (but you risk the warranty of your mixer):

• Mix all liquid ingredients by hand using a wire whisk (Unless you have a lot of liquid that the included wire whisk of your mixer can mix it--you'll know what I mean).

• Add all the flour at once, leaving about 1/2 cup to finish the recipe and always scrape the dough from the sides of the bowl and hook.

• When kneading, mix the flour with the liquids at speed setting 2 until no loose flour exists (about a minute), then mix at speed 4 (or even 6) until dough is smooth and won't stick to your fingers when touched--but still pasty (depending on the room humidity, this is about 2 minutes--don't forget to add the remaining flour during the mixing/kneading process).

When mixing in high speed, the gluten strands are cut short but you still have a lot of it forming. With this, you get good structure to hold the air during rising and will have a fine soft texture of the finished product. Unless you like a heavy, rubbery tough bread, then mix it slowly to get long strands of gluten. Also high speed mixing aerates the dough for a fluffier body (No wonder commercial bread is so soft and airy).