Using Bread Machines in Worship

The only thing better than the taste and smell of freshly baked bread is incorporating those elements in worship. We did that this past Sunday and it was a wondrous celebration of Word and Table. Our Christian tradition has no shortage of resources about bread (we used the Luke 13 parable of the leaven and the "Great Thanksgiving for Thanksgiving or other meals" from the United Methodist Book of Worship). However, practical tips about setting up bread machines during worship were a little harder to find... so here are some things I learned:

• For scent purposes, you probably want 3 or 4 machines (we had two working in our contemporary service and could barely smell them in our large worship space. One was 'ok' for the sanctuary narthex, but I would've wanted 2 in there also).
• Check the cycle times on your bread machines.
•  The 'knead' cycle or the 'punch' cycle are noisy, so avoid those during worship. You want the BAKING to occur during the service (or just before).
• Some machines have silencing options, but most of them beep when finished. We did not find this distracting during the service, but we also explained it to the congregation, so it wasn't a surprise.
• Test your bread machines ahead of time!!! Even if you don't do a full bake cycle, press the buttons and 'start' your cycle. Nothing is worse than calculating all your times, filling all the machines, and then getting a surprise error message.
• Give your machines plenty of space--If your recipe doesn't have enough water and/or the machine is old, the machine might move during the knead cycle. I tested one machine and it rocked its way off of my kitchen counter! On Sunday morning, I set the machines on the floor and then put them on tables during the final rise and bake cycles.
• Make sure you're not plugging multiple machines into the same electrical circuit--especially if your breakers tend to trip. We flipped through breakers and figured out exactly which plug went to which breaker switch.
• If you're using fresh bread for communion or as part of the service:
• Make sure you leave enough time for the bread to cool. For our 9:00 service, we set the machines to go off at 9:35 and the bread was still steaming when we broke it open for communion! It was breathtaking, but still a touch warm.
• Have volunteers ready to remove the finished bread (and the kneading paddles that often get stuck in the bread). ...and make sure they know how the machines work. Some baskets need to be turned or wiggled 'just so.' In a perfect world, your volunteers would be the people who owned those machines. 
• When we moved from the sermon to the communion liturgy, I simply asked if our fresh bread was ready and one of our volunteers yelled 'yes!' and brought two loaves forward on a wooden cutting board (covered with white cloth). It was an informal procession.
•  For bread removal, don't forget to have oven mits, cooling racks, plastic spatulas and wooden spoons ready.
• Mix the dry ingredients ahead of time. All I had to do was measure water, dump in a large ziploc of bead mix (see below), and add yeast. Ta dah!! It cut down on mess and time.
• If you're NOT using fresh bread for communion, you can still invite people to 'taste and see' the goodness after the service. We had a bread maker going in the narthex, so I removed the fresh loaf after the benediction and invited people to continue the worship experience on their way out of church... (or if you have leftovers, make sure to invite people back to the altar to consume the elements. They won't last long!)
• Please, please, remember to offer a gluten-free option. Even if it's wafers instead of bread, you'll be surprised how many people are usually excluded from eucharist because of food allergies.

Our Bread Machine Recipe for Communion

(compiled from all the different machine books, this recipe yields a slightly crumbly crust, but it tears easily for intiction):

Mix Ahead of time:

•  3 cups flour
• 1.5 TBS sugar
• 1.5 TBS dry milk
• 1 tsp salt

To add later (check your machine for which order they go into the basket):

•  1.5 TBS butter. 
• 1 cup and 2 TBS water.
• 2 tsp yeast (I used bread machine yeast)--make sure it doesn't touch water