Recipe - Pain De Champagne

Sponge:
1 cup Champagne; Brut
2 teaspoon Yeast
1 cup White Flour; Unbleached
Remainder:
1 One half teaspoon Yeast
1 teaspoon Salt
4 tablespoon Nonfat dry milk
2 One fourth cup White Flour; Unbleached
2 tablespoon Butter
1 Egg; Extra Large
Above sponge

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
haven't 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.

Joan,"Flour Power" From: LIR119@delphi.com
From: BreadBakers Archives: ftp.best.com/pub/reggie/archives/bread/recipe