Bread making machines

[Shallot Man]

The other half brought a secondhand bread making machine home from the WI. Bought a premixed loaf from well known supermarket. Followed instructions to the letter. Could have putty-ed in glass with the result, any tips !

[glallotments]

Did you use exactly the amount of water that it said as that is important.

[Shallot Man]

glallotments. fairly certain we did. Will give it another go. PS I notice the birds don't seem very interested in out first loaf.

[Tony Hague]

Don't use quick bake programmes. Good bread is not made in a hurry.

As said above, accuracy of measuring and order of adding ingredients matters. Very cold water can louse up some machines.

Check that it actually works - it does get hot properly ?

If you start with raw ingredients (not a packet), the type of flour has quite an effect on the result. Especially on the Italian programme on mine. Waitrose strong bread flour is good.

Lastly, a bit late I know, but - choose a Panasonic, they seem to perform by far the best.

[John]

Hello SM
Don't buy these premixed flours - results can be very disappointing.
Buy a good 'strong' bread flour (Doves or Carrs are good) and most important of all use the correct type of yeast. This often called quick yeast - it is the only one that works in bread machines.
Getting the best from a machine is part art and part science and you will need to persevere to find out how to get the best out of it. Start with simple basic white loaves as they are the easiest to get right. As others have said you do need to measure things accurately. Its not like making a cake where a bit of this and some more of that will give you a good bake. These machines are not very forgiving when it comes to quantities. Also make sure that you add the ingredients in the correct order - read the manual.
Good luck - a homemade loaf really is wonderful thing infinitely better than supermarket pap.

John

[Kleftiwallah]

We were given one by the sprog. Getting average results, until I read about the dough programme, now I let the m/c mix and then bung it in a loaf tin. Far beter results. Cheers, Tony.

[glallotments]

Ours is a Panasonic as Tony mentioned they have a good reputation for turning out good bread (if you follow the recipes to the letter). Maybe the bread mix isn't producing for you.

[alan refail]

We do use bread mixes: the excellent range from Wright's.

The two we use are these

and

Kneaded in a mixing bowl, straight into a loaf tin, left to rise then 20-23 minutes in a hot oven at 220C.

We wouldn't touch a bread making machine if you paid us

[glallotments]

We do use bread mixes: the excellent range from Wright's.

We wouldn't touch a bread making machine if you paid us

Hi Alan you use bread mixes but wouldn't use a bread machine? We wouldn't be without ours - without it we wouldn't have fresh home baked bread every other day!

[FredFromOssett]

Have been using bread machines for years now, and had several different makes. In my opinion the Panasonic beats all the others hands down. When buying bread flour it is worth checking the protein content in the list of nutritional values on the packet, as the higher the content the better the loaf.

[Samuel]

We have a Kenwood Rapid Bake which we only use occasionally to get the smell of cooked bread in the house when we have visitors for lunch!! The resulting bread is not worth eating and is fed to the ducks next day.
We bought daughter no.1 a Panasonic for Christmas and the bread made with that is marvellous and still good a couple of days later if any is left. We have since bought daughters no`d 2 and 3 a Panasonic as we love that bread when we visit. Must get around to buying one for oursellves (about £100 I think)

Samuel

[Geoff]

Don't understand this use of machines and mixes. My wife just buys flour at less than 80p kilo not a premix at say £1.90 kilo and bakes it in the oven.

[Tony Hague]

Why use a breadmaker ? Bread makers can do an overnight bake and have it ready for breakfast. They take less time, and less energy than hand-baking in the oven.

Can't understand packet mixes though, unless something special like gluten free.

[Geoff]

Apologies, I hadn't thought of the energy bit. We use an expensive and very un-green solid fuel Aga so the marginal cost of cooking a batch of bread is negligible.

[glallotments]

Don't understand this use of machines and mixes. My wife just buys flour at less than 80p kilo not a premix at say £1.90 kilo and bakes it in the oven.

It also depends on what else you want to fit in to your life - as for me I don't want to be tied to bread making every other day!