Is it worth buying a breadmaker?

[comfytoast]

Question is , is a breadmaker a Godsend or a waste of time?
IYKWIM

Godsend if you buy a Panasonic (the brand that makes good bread)

godsend- but dinnertime here so have to be brief!

Worth having, but maybe not worth buying seeing as people always seem to be Freecycling them

It is really easy to make bread without a breadmaker.

I think they're very good. However, they're very big and I don't like too many things on surfaces in the kitchen, so I like to put mine in a cupboard, and I'm often too lazy to get it out of the cupboard and actually use it!!

Our Panasonic 253 is fab.

We live in a rural area where the nearest place to purchase a loaf of sawdust bread is a petrol garage about 4 miles away.

So for us our breadmachine is a godsend.

we love ours, panasonic - my brother and sister also have the same one (all bought them independently of each other within a couple of months!

I love mine.

Although I generally use it to make the dough and then I get it out and make it in a tin - that way you don't get the hole in the middle of the bread where the blade is.

but I use it to make rolls as well, and I once tried making my own bread and it was a flop so breadmaker all round.

Love love love my Panasonic. We never run out of bread any more. It takes a few minutes to set it before bed - like, less than 5 minutes from deciding to make bread to walking away from the machine, done.

Makes nice bread too.

Love the Panasonic. Have not heard great reviews about other brands. 5 minutes to add the ingredients, 1hr50 on the fastbake programme, and voila, a warm, fluffy gorgeous loaf. I do 300g of white bread flour and 100g of wholemeal, just to trick the dc into eating some wholemeal bread

We have not bought a single loaf of bread for well over a year, it is honestly fab!

And then you can make pizza dough, ciabatta dough, french sticks, all sorts of buns.... the possibilities are endless....

yes, yes, buy the Panasonic. Cheaper to make yummier bread, saves money as well as you never have to just pop to shop for bread for lunchboxes then end up buying lots of other stuff.

And the pizza dough is delicious.

I agree the pizza dough is great - my kids had home made pizza for lunch - the dough takes 40 mins to make

I have a big huge morphy richards, make bread allmost every night using the timer. Fresh bread smel int he morning is fantastic.

Only takes 10 mins to set up and fill each night. I have a couple of slices for breakfast, kids have 4 slices each in pack lunch and I have the rest with my soup at lucnh time. 1.5lb loaf just the right size for us.

haven't mastered the pizza dough yet, it wa a bit soggy I had to add loads of flour and never plan far enough in advance to set it up.

Mixed feelings here. I have got one (bought for me), and I use it occasionally, but really I feel I'm using it more because I have it and don't want it to lurk un-used than because I need it or it's that brilliant.

What I mean is, I make my own bread by hand. It takes 5-10 mins actual work to make, dead easy. The breadmaker bread is never ever as good as mine, isn't any quicker and only makes 1 loaf, whereas I make 4-5 at a time. So I'm left wondering what it is that the breadmaker is supposed to be doing for me.

As for using a breadmaker to make dough/rolls etc - why? The dough is so easy to make, literally 5-10 mins, and the oven always cooks it better anyway, so you might as well do the whole process by hand (or with a food processor if you have trouble kneading dough, for example if you have arthritis). O

I have used and/or had bread made in various breadmakers (including the much-vaunted) Panasonic, and while some of the loaves have indeed been acceptable and better than supermarket rubbish, they have never been as good as my bread. Even my breadmaker-loving relatives acknowledge that!

So to summarise, if you usually buy yucky bread then a breadmaker would possibly make better bread. If you want really good bread at little effort, make it by hand!

I've got a Morphy Richards one too, I think I got it for about 50 quid in Debenhams, nearly 3 years ago. I love it! I use it all the time. I probably make a loaf every other day (only really dh and I eating it, with soup at lunchtime), and we prob eat about half a loaf a day most days. If I'm up early enough and remember, I like to put it in that morning (as wholemeal works better w/out timer), though plenty of times I use the timer with wholemeal and it's just fine. I've never regretted getting mine - it's very useful!

Perhaps the only thing I should still invest in is something to cut the bread so the slices are thinner, as I end up with huge thick slices sometimes that are a bit heavy going to eat!

And the pizza dough, I make it once a week! I often put the ingredients in after lunch and set the timer so I have the dough ready at say 5pm. If I relied on putting it on only 1.5 hours before I needed it, I'd probably always forget! But the timer makes it just perfect. I always half the recipe, since I don't need a huge amount of pizza, though I add a bit extra flour, as it seemed to come out too doughy otherswise.

So yeah, I'd say it's worth it!

I had one once - it wasn't very good, came as a free gift with a washing machine, I think, and didn't last long. However, I make bread almost daily, with great ease (and a lot quicker than breadmaker) using the bread hook attachment on my Kitchen Aid mixer. Far nicer, not all doughy and sweaty like the breadmaker, and no hand kneading involved. That said, haven't tried one of the good brand breadmakers.