Any of yalls have a bread maker?
I'm thinking of buying one and I'm getting alot of dicey mixed reviews online.
Help us keep this site organized and clean. Thanks!
[
Report Post
]
Comments ( 11
)
-
litelander8
I’ve read that you can bake bread in a crock pot. It would definitely get more use than a bread maker.
Comment Hidden ( show ) -
Boojum
If your idea of good bread is fluffy white mass-produced stuff, then it's going to be a waste of money to get a bread machine. It's also going to be a waste of money if you think you're not organised enough to keep a stock of flour and dried yeast in the cupboard, and you can't plan ahead and make another loaf when the one you're using is running out.
I've had a Panasonic bread-maker for about twenty years now, and we hardly ever buy bread. I estimate that I've used it on average every third day over all that time. In fact, I can smell a loaf baking as I type this.
It hasn't actually been the same machine all that time, but three different ones. It wasn't that any of them broke down, it's just that I was tempted to buy the latest version every few years.
Before the Panasonic, I had a cheap generic Chinese machine that was really crap, since the loaves weren't consistent and varied between more or less edible, stodgy lumps and over-baked.
If you're American, one other thing you might need to get along with the bread machine could be digital kitchen scales. Americans do love their stupid cup measures for some weird reason, and you'll never get consistent results if you rely on volume measurements of flour and liquid. Bread-making is a matter of chemistry and physics, and no chemist measures quantities of reactants by using teaspoons and cups.
If you follow the recipes that come with the Panasonic machine and use good quality yeast meant for use in bread machines and high-protein bread flour, you're guaranteed to get a good loaf. If you don't like something about the result, you can fiddle around with the proportions a little to try to alter the product. Once you find the combination of a particular brand of flour and a particular amount of water and other ingredients that works for you, the only thing that will stop you getting exactly that same loaf every time is if the electricity goes off.
I've been making our own bread for so long now that I can get another loaf started in less than three minutes, then it's just a matter of waiting for the machine to finish. The only slightly annoying thing about the Panasonic machines is that the beeping to signal that the loaf is done has always been far too discreet, so I've always used another kitchen timer for this.
Some people get hung up on the paddle in the base of the mixing/baking pan, and they dislike how there's a hole in the bottom of the loaf if you leave it in after the machine has finished kneading. It is possible to pull the thing out, but that's always seemed too much of a messy hassle to me, so I've always just left it in and given the pan a bit of a whack on the kitchen counter to dislodge the baked loaf from the pan.
I also use the machine to make pizza dough. Perfecting the process of making pizza from scratch took me some time, and I had to buy a counter-top pizza oven from Italy along with wood and metal peels, but there's nothing inherently difficult about it. These days, I can go from putting flour and water in the bread machine to putting just-cooked pizza on the table in about an hour and a half.
Comment Hidden ( show )-
-
-
Mammal-lover
Boojum I could kiss you, thank you. This is exactly what I was hoping to hear. I used to live next to a store that made bread fresh everyday and having access to real bread was a treat. Your right this mass produced stuff sucks.
So Panasonic is worth while then? I'm seeing some really nice and expensive machines and some reall yh cheap ones all have glowing and horrid reviews.
I'm mainly trying to find a quiet one. I work over nights and I doubt people wana hear a warzone at 8pm
Comment Hidden ( show )-
-
-
Boojum
I wouldn't claim that only Panasonic machines are any good; the basic principles of a bread machine are pretty simple, so I'm sure that other companies must have got it right by now - if only by reverse-engineering the Panasonic product. I also wouldn't claim that no Panasonic can ever go bad. Like any machine, there will inevitably be a few with defects that aren't spotted by quality control and show up after a few uses, and sometimes things wear out after a lot of use. Recently I had to replace the nut-dispenser cup in the top of our machine because the latch mechanism broke due to the heat of several hundred baking cycles making the plastic brittle.
I suspect the main reason for the contradictory reviews of the cheaper machines is a problem you see with a lot of Chinese-produced stuff: poor quality control in the factories making the components and assembling them. You might luck out and get a good machine where all the components just happen to be without defects, or you might get one where one or more mistakes were made when making the components and assembling them.
Like I say, though, I've had several Panasonic bread-makers, and they've proved very reliable. I've also gifted Panasonic machines to friends, and they seem happy with them.
I just had a look at Amazon USA for bread machines, and the prices I saw there were ridiculous. There was a huge run on bread makers in the UK when the corona virus restrictions came in and a lot of places sold out very rapidly. I assume the same has happened in the USA, so now you have scumbag profiteers asking absurd prices. For what it's worth, Amazon UK lists the Panasonic SD-2500 as out of stock, but the price is £120 (roughly US $150). As a rule, appliances of all sorts are significantly cheaper in the USA compared to the UK, so you might need to hold off on this purchase until the current shit-storm dies down and you can get a machine for a reasonable price.
(A little off-topic, but rather amusing to me: flour and yeast were some of the first things to disappear in UK supermarkets, and now there are stories in the media of people who have a stockpile of bread ingredients, but no idea at all of how to convert them into edible bread.)
None of our Panasonic machines have been noisy. The only sound they make is when the motor is turning the paddle to knead the bread, so there's usually just a whirring sound. That goes on for fifteen minutes or so at the start. In the early stages when the liquid has only just been mixed in and the dough is stiff, you can get some thumping of dough against the side of the pan and the pan locking ring at the base can rattle a little, but even that is much, much quieter than, say, a dishwasher. It's not comparable at all to something like a food mixer or processor.
Once the dough has been thoroughly kneaded and the process goes into the proofing (rising) stage, the only sound is the faint clicking of an electrical relay switching the heating element on and off. There's another kneading phase to knock down the dough before the final proof and bake phases, but that's a lot quieter than the first kneading.
I have no idea what your daily schedule is, but the normal white-loaf bake cycle takes four hours, and the whole wheat loaf needs five hours. The machines do have rapid-bake options that need only two hours, but my experience is that the loaves those produce aren't nearly as nice. (Also, there is some evidence that slow-risen bread is better for us, and some scientists have suggested that part of the reason for the prevalence of gluten sensitivity and intolerance these days might be because commercially-produced "bread" is produced so rapidly that the proteins in it are different to those of bread that's had more time to proof.)
Comment Hidden ( show )
-
-
-
raisinbran
I bought one, used it a couple times, put it in a box for ten years, then donated it to Goodwill. Problem is the product appeals to lazy people, but you still have to go out and buy the ingredients.
Comment Hidden ( show ) -
donteatstuffoffthesidewalk
someone gave me one as a gift and i gave it away as a gift
ill go buy bread at the bread store if i really want bread
Comment Hidden ( show ) -
Vvaas
-
Handyman
We did use one but the loaves were to small. Been baking easy bread now and leaving it overnight before baking. We found the real difference is stone ground GMO free flour.
We never buy bread any longer, so machine or self baking is a winner every time.Comment Hidden ( show ) -
666XxKLOWNYBEASTxX666
-
Tommythecaty
-
Clunk42