Tell me about your bread maker

[Millymollymandy]

I'm thinking of getting one because I'm getting a bit bored with making bread by hand, and not always getting very good results, even with bread flour bought in the UK.

However I'm sure there is an enormous choice of different machines so where do I start looking?!

So, if you have a bread maker that you use regularly and that you are happy with, can you tell me about it please? Or alternatively one that you are not happy with, and why!

[9ball]

Might as well kick this one off then,

I got my one a year or so ago from Lidl for about £20 I think, being that it's from Lidl it's made by Bifinett. I've been very pleased with it and had no problems at all. Bakes a nice loaf of bread. It's nice to put the ingredients in the night before and put the timer delay on so you can wake up to the smell of fresh bread baking. Very good for the price I'd say.

Tom

[Shirley]

I've got the Panasonic SD253 and it's brilliant. The raisin/nut dispenser is great for adding seeds etc... there are lots of different settings... the bread is good. You can make dough in it or bake only for loaf cakes etc (not that good in my opinion)

Ours has had a LOT of use... we've had it for about 4 years now and it's still going strong. Hardly any hole in the bottom either.

[Martin]

acquired a secondhand Morphy Richards "Icon" breadmaker (the bog standard one with a garish chrome case) a couple of weeks ago - so far everything that has come out of it has been edible - trouble is, everyone who's tried it loves it, and I could open a bally bakery!
"Marriages" wholemeal bread flour works well with a bit of tweaking of the basic recipe, and the addition of about 200mg of powdered vit C tablet
(proper one, bioflavanoids etc.! - none of your Boots rubbish!)
It works very well, looks like it's made to last, and really does seem to do what it says on the tin! - the only downside I can see to them generally is that if you want fresh bread for brekky, it switches on four hours twenty minutes before you get up, so unless you've got a soundproof kitchen, beware of various noises announcing it's working!

[Muddypause]

Mine sounds a similar one to Martins', a Morphy Richards 48210 which I bought it in 2002. It finally died maybe a year ago.

As these things go, it was a pretty good mid-range one that seemed good and sturdy, though it had very little in the way of bells, whistles and programming options. You could only choose one of half a dozen pre-set programmes, and the timer was a basic 'add ten minutes' button.

It got used every other day, often more, and made decent enough bread. The big advantage is that you can easily experiment with recipies without feeling you've wasted a lot of effort should it turn out a failure.

Sometimes the pan would pop out of its clips as the paddle stirred the dough. This meant the paddle stopped turning, and the loaf would inevitably fail. The remedy was to bend the clips a little, so that they held the pan more securely. Seemed to need doing every few months.

But I was disappointed when, after a couple of years, the seal around the spindle at the bottom of the pan failed. This meant that any liquid in the pan would leak out, making overnight programming impossible. This seems much too early for such a failure - a similar seal in a car engine would last 10 years and 100,000 miles. But if you started the programme straight away, without the overnight hold, it was still useable. Then, the bearing that held the spindle in place started to fail. For a while, this had the advantege of enabling you to remove the spindle altogether after the mixing stage was completed, resulting in loaves without a hole in the bottom.

But eventually, the bearing failed altogether, breaking up into little pieces. A replacement pan is available, but at a cost beyond all reason. I've kept the thing with the idea that I might make up a new bearing to fit, but I seem to be right out of round tuits at the moment.

My questions about breadmakers in general are:
1). Why hasn't anyone come up with one that stirs from the top - retractable paddle; no hole in the loaf; no seals to fail.
2). What is the absolute environmental cost of using one? They can only make one loaf at a time, and necessarily use electricity. If it replaces your use of a gas oven to make bread, this may not be a good thing. If it replaces your use of an electric oven to make a single loaf, it may be a OK. And if you previously drove to the shop to buy a loaf that had been made in an oven with 100 other loaves, what then? I have an uncomfortable feeling that the net result is not all good, especially as it meant my bread consumption increased dramatically.

[Shirley]

2). What is the absolute environmental cost of using one? They can only make one loaf at a time, and necessarily use electricity. If it replaces your use of a gas oven to make bread, this may not be a good thing. If it replaces your use of an electric oven to make a single loaf, it may be a OK. And if you previously drove to the shop to buy a loaf that had been made in an oven with 100 other loaves, what then? I have an uncomfortable feeling that the net result is not all good, especially as it meant my bread consumption increased dramatically.

I've often wondered this too - someone must have done the sums somewhere surely. I put on loads of weight when we first got our breadmaker!!!!

[pskipper]

We got a Morphy Richards one as a joint present from my parents at christmas, So far it's been great although you do have to use the fast action yeast with it. I also found that the recipe book that comes with it is a little out on the yeast quantities and you need to add 1/4-1/2 a teaspoon more than they say. The trouble is that it does taste so much better than the shop bought loaves :)

[Millymollymandy]

Thanks everyone for your contributions.

Already there are things I hadn't thought about - holes in the loaf (I don't know how they work so hadn't thought about that!), also a 'thingy' to add seeds and nuts - well that is a must!

I also didn't know Amazon sold breadmakers! Whatever next!!!

I have not wanted to get one before because I figured I could bake two loaves in my oven at once whereas I can only do one in a breadmaker. However for the time it will save me I think it will be worth it; also I can programme it to come on during off peak electric rates.

Plus everyone says the bread is good!

[wulf]

I think I've had my Russell Hobbs Breadman Pro for about four years now. I'm not eating so much bread at the moment but it is still getting used about two or three or so times a week so was a worthwhile investment.

About two years in, the timer went; a pain in some ways but it prompted me to make more use of the machine to make doughs for handshaping so in some ways that was a blessing. One thing to bear in mind if you're planning on making bread at cheap electricity rates is that you need to get the bread out of the pan as soon as it is done (otherwise it will probably stick, sink and fail to cool properly) - I don't know what hours you are talking about but you might need to get up very early to pursue that strategy!

With my model, seeds and nuts need to be added manually - it beeps about five or ten minutes into the mixing cycle. What I would love would be an ultraprogrammable machine so that I could tell it exactly what I want; mind you, I'd probably still settle down to using not more than the two or three settings I regularly use (out of the 16 on offer).

Or, you could forego the machine and try no-knead bread instead.

Wulf

[pskipper]

If you are on a 2 rate meter it changes from low rate to high rate at about 6:30 (in the winter, 7:30 in the summer as the meters aren't that smart) so providing you have a long commute to work or are an early riser the low rate is a reasonable option.

[Paddy's mum]

I had a Morphy Richards breadmaker for about four years. I had no complaints about it except that it took up quite a lot of space in my relatively small kitchen.

I found that I had to be very sure that the fast action yeast that the manufacturer's recommend was used up quickly (old, tired yeast really doesn't achieve much and it's considered old in 8 weeks or so)

I finally gave it away when I worked out that with just the two of us and the machine able to make only one 2lb loaf at a time, a couple of hours of electricity made my bread very expensive.

If I were heavily into making my own bread, I would certainly have one to prepare only to the finished dough stage and then shape and bake in a conventional oven. However, having said that, a Kenwood Chef would probably manage two-loaves-worth of dough in a much shorter time.

Perhaps a lot depends on whether you wish to be hands-on throughout or prefer the capability of being able to set it and walk away to do other things.

[Karen_D]

I've got a Morphy Richards one that I'm very pleased with. I think they are better for either smaller households of 2-3 people where you only want to bake one loaf at a time. More than that it is probably better to bake traditionally.

[the.fee.fairy]

i love our breadmaker too, it does lovely bread!
However...it is a bit sweet, anyone got any ideas how to change this?

[Milims]

I found him almost naked in my kitchen at 7.30am making croissants!!!

[Muddypause]

i love our breadmaker too, it does lovely bread!
However...it is a bit sweet, anyone got any ideas how to change this?

I had this problem when I first got my breadmaker, and it was down to me not understanding the difference between different types of dried yeast. Read the yeast packet carefully - some of it doesn't need any sugar to be added to the mix, some of it does.

If you put sugar with the stuff that doesn't need it, you will get an over-sweet loaf.