Basic High-Altitude French Bread for Welbilt Breadmaker

I used to live near sea level, where I had wonderful success with breadmaker breads. Back then, I'd just estimate the amount of yeast, salt, and sugar, and I'd toss in all sorts of extra ingredients. Once even a bread made with yellow cake mix and some leftover spinach. However, after moving to a mile-high altitude, I had to stop casually adding ingredients. In fact, I couldn't even turn out a decent loaf of white bread. I was about to donate my breadmaker away, when I came across tips for high-altitude baking on the internet. I stayed up late one night reading. Then I started experimenting. My breadmaker is the Welbilt Model #ABM-100. [That's the breadmaker that's shaped like R2D2.] I played around with ingredient amounts until I found a combination that uses regular flour at high-altitude. Now, I've never tried this at OTHER high altitudes ... maybe what works in my altitude/temperature/humidity will fail dismally in another part of the world. And I don't know what would happen if you choose to use bread flour. Here's the basic French bread that works for me. But I haven't dared to add spinach to it.

• Ready In: 4 hrs 10 mins
• Yields: 12 slices

Ingredients

• 1⁄2 tablespoon  yeast
• 1⁄2 tablespoon sugar
• 1⁄2 tablespoon salt
• 1⁄2 tablespoon butter
• 1 1⁄2 cups water
• 3  cups flour

Directions

1. Add ingredients to breadmaker in order listed.
2. Select French bread setting.
3. Push start.
4. Four hours later, slice and eat.
5. This is best when freshly-sliced; it doesn't seem to keep particularly well. But, if you have teenagers, the question of needing to keep leftovers is irrelevant anyway.