Cuban Bread

     My family used to go to a Cuban bakery every time we went to the beach for our vacation.  We all had our favorite treat and we could each get one.  The one thing that we always got multiples of was the Cuban Bread.  They made the best Cuban bread I have ever tasted in my life.  I have been told that the bakery is still there but that the ownership changed and so did the Cuban bread.   This summer my nieces and I drove all over Tampa when I was on vacation searching for the best Cuban bread.  We found some good contenders but non could match the  memory of the bread from my childhood.  My local grocery store sells Cuban bread.... but in my opinion it is far from being Cuban bread.  Now that I have my bread machine I went in search of recipes.  I found various recipes online.  Some called for lard, others butter, some sugar, while some had none of the above.  The cooking times and settings also varied considerably in some cases.  I decided to play around and make my own variation using what I had seen in all of the recipes.  My aunt and I decided that the bread I made tonight was a winner.  While the shape is not that of a traditional Cuban bread the taste was superb.  The crust came out just right in texture.  I already called my nieces and told them the search is over.

Ingredients

• 1 and 1/8 cup water
• 3 cups bread flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 3 - 5 tbsp butter
• 1 and 1/2 tsp yeast

Directions

• Put ingredients in bread machine baking pan.  Wet ingredients first, then dry, and finally yeast.
• I used the French bread setting, medium crust, 2 lbs.