What do you think of breadmaker machines?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I found that the bread didn't keep so well

That is due to a lack of calcium propionate which used to be found only in the long life bread a few years ago but is found in almost all ready-made bread now. It inhibits mould growth meaning it will be very slightly toxic to humans (hopefully it is only trace amounts being used in bread).

[kalniel]

i really enjoy the bread that comes out of there when it's hot, not so enjoyable once it's cooled down, think you can taste the heaviness when it's cooled. still it's different from anything else that you can buy unless you know a really obscure farm type shop

Chorleywood process:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13670278

[TheAnimus]

My parents have one, I think it was on sale or something but it was still expensive. Its actually very good, and I'm a texture snob with bread, but its really rather good, and very cheap to run.

[chuckskull]

i really enjoy the bread that comes out of there when it's hot, not so enjoyable once it's cooled down, think you can taste the heaviness when it's cooled. still it's different from anything else that you can buy unless you know a really obscure farm type shop

I have to agree with that, it's lovely warm, but once it's cooled down I just found to be just pretty average bread. I think most bread is lovely warm though tbh. Wouldn't buy one myself.

[wombar]

I picked up one of the Panasonics just before they brought out the new ones for £60. Absolutely love mine, and it gets used regularly (3-4 times a week). Pizza dough, white/brown loaf, dough (for french sticks/rolls that go in the oven etc) and lots of other good stuff are all on the menu these days.

First of all, I know (mostly) what's going into my bread. I trust the big supermarkets about as far as I can throw a superstore which is to say not very far. There's no excessive salt/sugar in my bread, and I know I'm not putting preservatives etc in. Whether you make it by hand, or with a machine, this is probably one of the most important reasons for me.

Secondly it's a big time saver (for me at least). I spend 2 minutes measuring out flour, yeast, water etc. That's it until the loaf is ready to come out a few hours later. Making bread by hand isn't rocket science, but it takes time. I'm very happy with the effort vs result that comes out of my breadmaker.

Thirdly, I don't like the airy/light/tasteless bread that comes from the supermarket. I like my bread to be fairly dense and to actually taste of something. I can buy good quality flour in big sacks and tailor my loaf to my mood

Is it as good as making it by hand? Absolutely not.

Would I regularly make my own bread by hand? No. I don't have the time/inclination at the moment.

If you're going to buy a breadmaker, buy a good one. You need to spend £60+ IMO, and preferably a Panasonic as both my brothers and parents have them as well. They've all got nothing but good things to say about them.

Love mine, and I wouldn't be without it

[Splash]

We rarely use ours but when we do it doesn't half make the flat smell nice.

[Zak33]

I use mine fairly often.. I'd not be without it, put it that way.

I don't have a proper full sized food processor as I don't have the space... and to get one would involve getting rid of the bread maker to make cupboard space.

And I've not done that... I'd rather chop and mix stuff myself and have the bread maker.

I use it for bread, dough and cakes.

I think you can use them for jam too... but that sounds pretty messy so so far I've not!

[Stoo]

tbh, for jam, just use a saucepan - easy peasy, I've made loads of it recently

We've also got one of the panasonics, it does a pretty good job if you get the ingredients correctly weighed, but I do prefer a nice hand-made loaf

[merdat]

I use one and results are good but prefer to make by hand using 'mixer' to knead as you don't get a hole in base when removing paddle. A lot healthier making your own bread. Breadmaker is convenient as it does the whole job - just throw is ingredients ,switch on and bread ready in about 3 hours.

[bigizzman]

Pull up a bollard & swing the sea lantern........when I was a young lad, serving on Her Majesty's premier warship, HMS Ark Royal.

(yep the one they just scrapped...DON'T GET ME STARTED!!!!)

I was working in the galley...kitchen to you land lubbers, to cut a very long story short I had an opportunity to get up very early & help out in the bakery.

The truth is I lost the bet the forfeit being help the baker make 800 loaves of bread & 3000 rolls.

This process was done on an industrial scale the food mixer was bigger than most concrete mixers,flour & yeast were measured kg's and 10's of grams respectively.

On this scale I can honestly say that bread making isn't much fun.

After a long night of man handling great lumps of doe, I had the privilege of being shown how to make bread by hand, by a master baker.

The true joy of bread making is in the magic that happens after mixing a few dry ingredients, flour, yeast, salt & water.

No machine made bread has ever tasted anywhere near as good as the hot rolls, butter & cup of tea I had for breakfast that morning.

Save your money, by all means use your food processor... but always get your hand dirty you will never again be disappointed eating your own bread.

On a side note bread isn't supposed to stay fresh for a week......think bread & butter pudding, I'm with Cat they put a whole lot of sh1t in mass produced bread.

[Bagnaj97]

I've just bought a small breadmaker (This one if anyone's interested). Only had it a little over a week now but the small loaf is perfect for mine and my GF's sammiches for lunch. We used to buy a loaf at the start of the week and it would be pretty dry after a few days, with this we get fresh bread every day.

Played around a bit over the weekend with some recipes found online and they didn't turn out so well; it does seem, as stated in the manual, that the included recipes really are tailored to the machine as they turn out nice. It's just a case of throw in the ingredient and press go, but we've found that you need to add the ingredients in the order stated or things don't mix properly. Also make sure you use lukewarm water rather than straight from the tap. Too cold and the dough doesn't rise, too warm and the yeast is too active (big holes in the bread) too hot (above ~37c) and you kill the yeast.

[Saracen]

I asked the question expecting to get a variety of answers, because that reflects what a small small sample of friends have told me, including :-

- love them,
- don't like the bread, and
- do it by hand.

I'm a fan. I love mine (Panasonic, which, though not the cheapest to buy, does have a very good reputation and I have to say I think it's deserved), and I wouldn't be without it.

On the subject of making it by hand being preferable, I agree but ....

1) Not everybody can. For instance, if you've got arthritis in your hands, kneading bread is a no-no.

2) It take a lot more time and is a lot less convenient than a machine.

3) Unless you've got a delay timer on your oven, you can't set it going in the evening and wake up to a fresh bread smell in the morning.

Someone commented earlier on it being cheaper to but bread in the supermarket. Well, I've costed, in considerable detail, exactly what is costs me to make a loaf, and depending on what recipe (i.e. exactly what ingredients I use) it costs me between 28p and 52p for a 475g (i.e. weight of flour used). And that's everything, from the tiny cost of the yeast, to the cost of the electricity (measured by meter of actual cost of cooking several examples of each loaf).

It may be that some supermarkets can undercut that 28p (that was a large white, by the way), and some certainly used to do the 10p loss-leaders, though I haven't seen them for a while). But I've yet to taste a mass-produced bread, let alone the 10p specials, that comes within a mile of the taste of a decent home-produced loaf. Before anyone says "I don't like the bread from machines", read the bit on taste later on.

One of those loaves, be it 28p or 52p, last the wife and myself between 2 and 3 days. We find two slices each, in sandwich form, makes a GOOD lunch, whereas with supermarket bread, we'd be using three of even fur slices. Whether it lasts 2 or three days depends on whether we use any for toast for breakfast, or just lunch. Oh, and by the way, generally, both crusts come off on the day of baking, just as it's almost cooled, one each. The remaining loaf does, typically, 13 slices of the thickness we like.



Okay, now taste, and texture. That varies a lot according to several factors. Moist of my experience is with Panasonic machines so I can't comment too much on others, though I have used both Kenwood and Morphy Richards. My impression is that while the machine may make some difference (different kneading blades, timing on the programmer, resting/proving periods, etc) it's not a huge difference.

What does make a huge difference is the flour you use. It also makes a huge difference to the cost, and is the major factor behind why some loaves cost me 28p and some cost me 52p. Perhaps ironically, cheaper tends to my taste to be better.

So you can buy a cheap bag of bread flour from Aldi, ASDA etc for, approximately, 65-70p, or you can buy a bag of extremely strong Canadian premium, from Waitrose, for about £1.65 to £1.70. Which to use? The only loaf I've had out of my machine that I wasn't all that impressed with was when I used 100% of the expensive, fancy Canadian flour. The result was a rather heavy loaf, which actually was very good indeed for toast, but to my taste, was a bit strong in taste, and far too heavy on texture, for sandwiches.

But I keep stressing, "to my taste". There's no absolutes in that. Maybe some people genuinely prefer supermarket bread, and would over a good home-brew. If so, there's no accounting for taste.

Generally, I end up with about a 80:20 mix for a white loaf, 80% cheap flour at 68p-ish a bag, and 20% of the premium, with the latter adding extra flavour and a little extra body. The result is perfect for our tastes for sandwiches. Similarly, I often use a 60/40 mix between white and wholemeal because we like the results. Neither of those are combinations in the recipe book. They're arrived at by starting with ha basic recipe and tweaking it according to what we like.

As for process, I find that accurate measurement is fairly important for consistency and predictability, but even then, you have to expect flours to vary over time, and from one part of the year to another, so you may have to adjust quantities up or down for "perfect" results. I find a simple scale with a "zero" function helps hugely. We've got a small Salter thingy about the size of a tea plate. I put a basin on it, add one flour, zero it, add the next, zero it, add sugar, zero, add salt, zero. I've already put the yeast in the machine, so I then add the dried ingredients, add oil/butter, then water/milk, set timer, Job done. For those that have never done it, it take me under 7 minutes to get the equipment ready, get the ingredients out, go through that process, program the machine and put everything away, including rinsing the basin and measuring spoons, etc. 7 minutes, beginning to end, 2 to 3 times a week. And anything from about 2 to 14 hours pater, depending on the program used, and any overnight delay, fresh bread arrives.

So .... I used to pay (at today's prices) about £1.20p for a "decent" supermarket loaf. Now I'm paying, on average, about £0.35p for a FAR tastier loaf. We used to end up either throwing away some of the supermarket loaf, or putting up with half-stale bread, or freezing it, and that kills off most of whatever taste it had to start with. Rarely to we throw away any home-bake bread, because typically, we've eaten it before it deteriorates. After three days, it's certainly not as good as it was on day one, but still better than supermarket bread.

So, my view ..... bread machines are cheap to run, produce superb results if you get the recipe right, are convenient as hell and involve both less waste and a far improved quality of product. My advice to anyone starting out with one - buy cheap flour first, and see how you get on. Then try more expensive flour. Note what you like and what you don't. Then experiment a bit. What happens if you use butter versus oil, or milk versus water. What happens if you cut down the sugar or salt a little? What happens if you blend flours, either different whites, or white/brown. white/wholemeal, etc.

Full manual bread-making is still probably better, if you can do it, and if you have the time and inclination. But bread-maker bread is, if you do it right and certainly if you use the Panasonics (though I can't speak, either good or bad, or other machines) so much better than the largely tasteless, textureless bread from supermarket. Just hunt around for the right flour, and the right mix of flours. That is critical.

I very much agree with wombar (in fact, he largely stole my thunder ). And especially, I agree with the point about knowing what goes into your bread ... and controlling it.

[kalniel]

So.. model recommendations? Any bargains? Can you overclock them?

[Saracen]

We’ve got one, makes some loaves nice but only the ones that should be a bit heavier than normal. Even with gluten added the loaves are far too dense for my liking, to be fair it’s probably our fault for not doing it right as we do tend to just throw the ingredients in!

We’re getting rid of ours if you want one Saracen, just pick it up from Edinburgh & it’s yours!

Thanks for the offer, but I'm at the other end of the country (and I mean the UK, not the devolved bit up there ), and as you can see from my last post, I've got one anyway.

As for the loaves being too dense, and before you get rid of the machine, as per my last post, what flour do you use? If you use the "premium" brands, that might be the mistake. Try the cheapest bread flour (the sub-70p per 1.5kg bag stuff from LIDL, ASDA, etc) you can get. Personally, I prefer it, though the optimum is a blend, but I found the flour makes a vast difference to how dense the result is. And you can tweak the blend if the cheap flour is too light on it's own. But if you've used a strong, premium flour, I'm not surprised the result is too dense. It is for me, too.

[Saracen]

So.. model recommendations?

Panasonic. There's two models, with the more expensive one having, basically, an automatic dispenser to drop fruit, nuts, etc into the mix at the relevant point, and a rye blade for rye bread. I went for the cheaper one.

Any bargains? ....

Prices vary. I've seen the cheap one at anything from about £75 to £105, and it seems to go up and down with the weather. Argos had it on sale recently, but it seems to happen fairly regularly. John Lewis often seem to react. If not, point out the bargains and they may well match it, especially if it's in-stock at somewhere local like Argos.

Can you overclock them?

Yup. The "Crust" button lets you overclock and have light or extra crusty.

[Zadock]

I'm tempted but I hear they make a lot of noise? I live in a one bed flat with neighbours either side, is one liable to 1. irritate the neighbours or 2. stop me from sleeping if I whack it on at night to do bread for the morning?