I know there are lots of breadmaker fans on here, but has anyone bought one and not used it?

[MarthaFarquhar]

PILs have just very kindly dropped off some John Lewis vouchers for my birthday. I am toying with the idea of buying a breadmaker, but worried that as DH and I both work, we'll find it too much of a faff. What d'ya reckon?

I had one, and hated the bread it made so much it pushed me into hand-baking.

It's all sweet and nastily textured, and has a whacking great hole where the paddle gets baked in.

Biggest dust-catcher I ever bought.

Buy this instead it's my new favourite toy

I use mine nearly everyday. I used to bake bread by hand but found it too much of a bind so the breadmaker is a great compromise.

I have a panasonic and the paddle hole is not very big TBH. We all hate shop bought bread so it works for us.

My mum has one that she never uses. I guess it depends on how much you hate shop bought bread.

I had a russell hobs one and used for for a few months but to be honest I like shop bought bread better. My parents have a panasonic and I love the bread they make. They use it all the time.

It takes me three minutes to put the stuff in the machine and set it for the bread to be ready at 6am the following morning.

You can decrease the amounts of sugar you put in and adjust the salt. I use the french bread setting and just use sugar, salt, yeast, flour and water.

After a while you realise how bad shop bread tastes and the shit that they must stick in it to get it to taste so rank

god, I'm a bit worried now that I have a defective palette, as I'm fairly satisfied with in-store bakery bread (not sliced white tho). I think I need to befriend a breadmaker owner, so I can sample the produce before deciding.

I have had mine for 9 days since 43rd 29th birhtday and so far have made 3 loafs of bread [smug].

'Tis great, none of that having to "mind" the dough, let it rise, knead it again, let it rise, then stick in overn, then remember to take it out - or don't remember...

This morning we had still warm fresh sunflower seed bread for breakfast as I have figured out how to use the timer [majorly SMUG emoticon].

Highly recommended. Mine is from Morphy Richards BTW, DH apparently did a lot of research and Which? say it is the best, so it must be true .

Um... Bought my bread maker about a million years ago and it gathered dust for a long time as I didn't like the texture of the bread or the whacking great hole from the paddle. However..... I now use it every day for pizza dough and for making dough for breadrolls. A slight aside here - I use potato water which seems to make all the difference to the texture of the bread. I also use it for hot cross buns and brioche dough etc etc.

I inherited my Mums as she grew tired of it.
I never used it and it hit the charity shop.
I just don't care enough tbh.

Martha - I used to like the supermarket unsliced bread aswell, I thought it was ok. But after two years of not eating it and only eating my bread machine bread I had a loaf and realised what I had become used to was far nicer.

mmm, I've been watching this post with interest, I'm hoping to inherit a older breadmaker from my mum in law, what would you recommend to be te best loaf to start with?

I had one. I made one housebrick loaf of bread and thought this far too much trouble and now I don't even know where the thing is.

My Mum had more success but I think she too has given up.

I'd rather eat a cake anyway

I make soudough by hand - no yeast, or sugar, just flour, water and my starter.

It takes 6 mins to mix it all up in the evening. It rises overnight in a cool place.

In the morning i knock it back, take a bit of the starter out for the next loaf, put the dough on the baking tray to rise, leave it for an hour or so, then cook it for lunch.

I do this once or twice a week, varying the flour types.

I don't like breadmaker bread much for the same reasons as the rest of you.

! do like shop bread though !

Breadmakers - you either love them or hate them; there is no in between. I love mine and am onto our second one. Yes you do get a hole where the paddle was and sometimes you do make the odd brick but we have saved so much money (used to buy loaves costing about £1.30!), and now hate the taste of shop-bought bread. As someone pointed out its a good compromise between shop-bought and hand made and it only takes a couple of minutes to set up at night (keep all ingredients handy together in a box).

I love Lidl's bread mixes - great tasting, more "continental" bread, IYKWIM. Because it contains all ingredients incl yeast it cannot be made using the timer, only downside, IMO, as it takes literally seconds to bung half a pack and water in bread maker and press the button .

meltedmarsbars, how did you get your starter? Or did you make it? Sorry for thread hijack but the inner earth mother in me would love to try sourdough one of these days, but I do not know how/where to begin.

I made a few starters over time till I got one I like. A fellow mnetter helped by showing me this fab site .
There are quite a few sourdough bakers lurking here!
Basically a starter is flour and water and bugs out of thin air! A lot if bread recipe books have guides, sometimes the starter is called a "chef".

happy baking!

Thanks, for that, melted!

For anybody else who might be interested as well, I just found this. Fab site on first impressions - isn't t'internet A Good Thing !
Can't wait to try and start my own starter..

Not faff. I make up 7 batches of flour mix in one go, takes twenty minutes once a week. Less than 5 minutes to get a bread going.

We were brought one as a gift from gp. We used it a couple of times but it was too much of a faff and I didn't like the taste of the bread so we got rid of it - it was taking up too much cupboard space.

I bought my first BM on Monday and I love it so far. It's phenomenally easy...I used to hand-make bread until a few years ago - it didn't combine easily with the chaos of parenting toddlers imo.

I used the enclosed recipe book for the first loaf, and felt it was too sweet and that the milk powder was weird. Have now omitted milk powder and reduced sugar. Yum.

Re OP - me.

I loved mine so much, I wore it out. So I'm on the look-out for another one, miss it dreadfully.

I bought one and freecycled it

too much faff

mummyfor3: we used Lidl bread mixes for a long time and always with the timer. We never had a problem with it; just put water in first and bread mix on top.

Excellent! Thanks for that, peas!