Bread makers - yes or no?

[bendmeoverbackwards]

Following on from the soup maker thread - if you have a breadmaker and is it worth it?

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MNHQ

Yes i love it and never buy bread now.

Yes. We bought secondhand during the first lockdown and make bread pretty much every other day. We make a seeded granary loaf and it’s delicious! We occasionally buy a crusty sourdough at a weekend but that’s it.

I love mine. I mainly use it for rolls, pitta breads and pizza bases rather than loaves though. I slice then freeze the loaves because they tend to go stale pretty quickly as they have no preservatives added. Tastes so much nicer than shop bread.

Hate ours. Total white elephant

No - was given one, used it once and never again. It was just too much of a faff to clean.

We have one. We don't use it for bread at the moment because we are so rubbish at slicing a load you can't use it for sandwiches but we make pizza dough a lot in it and DH makes hot cross bun bread which is amazing.

I don’t find mine difficult to clean. It’s non-stick so any dried-on dough just falls off. Then I just bung it in the dishwasher but to be honest a quick wipe with a dishcloth would probably suffice.

I also have a fabulous recipe for Chelsea buns that went down a storm at work!

Yes! We love ours and the kids love fresh bread and soup for their lunch sometimes. It's so good to smell it baking too!

Yes, love it for bread, pizza dough, pastries. I would never bother with a soup maker though, blender works fine

Yes. Fresh bread, tastes great, healthier, lots of variety with seeds etc. Can make brioche (not healthy!). Ours is dead easy to clean - it’s a Panasonic.
It does take up space though.

Oooh I'm just about to embark on a bread making quest so it's nice to see that people do think it's worth it^

We are on our fourth, and finally invested in an expensive one. It gets used at least 3 times a week. During the Great Bread Flour Shortage of the first lockdown we had to ration our bread.
To start with we borrowed an unwanted one to see how we got on, then asked for one for Christmas, and returned the unwanted one. We wore out two cheapy Lidl bread makers in 4 years, but they made lovely bread while they lasted.

Yes, definitely, but Panasonic only.

@bendmeoverbackwards

Yes.

No, stupid mixing paddle ripped a ruddy great hole in the loaf, and the bread was only ok.

No, we've had two and got rid of them, I wouldn't have another. I've got a stand mixer for kneading and everything else is easy by hand, they take up too much space and aren't as versatile as hand baking. I bake bread about 3x a week.

We have had a few over the years. Cheap ones are useless unless you keep a very warm house, get something with a heated rise period. We find Panasonic make a good model for about £150 which we replace when they die (5 yearly roughly).

I don’t think we have ever washed ours, you just shake the loaf out of the tin and then put more ingredients in.

I’ve got a Russell Hobbs one that cost £50. It’s great for making a loaf. We’ve not been too daring with it, we’ve just made a white loaf, brown loaf and granary loaves.

I was glad to get rid of it, having made bread maybe 2x/week for about a year. I never liked our bread best. I don't even like bread that much!! Kids didn't prefer it.

Factory brown bread suits us better.

I hate bread makers, I’ve never, ever had a loaf of bread that is anything near what I can’t make by hand from one.

I’d suggest a stand mixer instead, it’s has soooo many more uses then just bread. And the bread it does make is endlessly better.

Use it at least every other day in the week, every day at weekends.

To pp with the slicing issues... I "score" the crust first on three sides, then cut down through the loaf and through the final side. You need a sharp bread knife.

We love ours and use it several times a week. We make a 100% whole wheat bread for daily use,musing stone ground flour. Also pizza dough, baguettes, crusty bread, brioche burger buns etc. We have a cake or quick bread cycle I used this week for banana bread and it was great.

I think this is our third bread maker, as we have had one for decades. Ours is a Zojirushi and it has two paddles and bakes horizontally. I like that the loaves look more like regular baked bread.

I don't find it hard to clean at all. Yes, the paddles make an indent on loaves baked in it, but I just ignore them. You can take them out before baking if they bother you.

I like having control over what is in our bread.

Yes but only Panasonic...often come up on ebay....

Yes. Love ours, make a loaf most days, wholemeal with seeds. Also use to make pizza dough.