Instructions: Prepare the sponge the night before using brut champagne ( dry , not sweet ). Pour champagne into a bowl, sprinkle on yeast and stir to dissolve. Add flour and mix well. Cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm place for 12 hours. To complete the bread: Place all the room temp ingredients into the breadmaker following your breadmakers instructions and use the white bread mode and press start.Authors note: this is a very interesting and elegant white bread. You must use brut champagne as to sweet champagne will kill the yeast.

For Betty who asked me if I used a sponge for the bread machine. No, I havent tried a sponge for a bread machine. I have seen recipes for it mentioned in several bread machine cookbooks.The sponge is like a batter and I assume it would rest in the bread machine an alloted amount of time before the remaining bread ingredients are re mixed with it. Hope this answers your question. See specific recipe below!

In using the sponge method, primarily most all the yeast and about 60% of the flour and liquid are added to form a thick batter which is allowed to ferment.then the remainder of the flour,salt, sugar, shortening,etc are mixed and added in to form the dough. The yeast has a head start to develop and the salt and shortening etc wont hinder its growth as it may do in the straight dough method.

Here is a bread machine sponge from: Bread Machine Baking, Perfect Every Time by Brody and Apter. I have not tried this.

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