Bread maker

[Ttbb]

We eat a reasonable amount of bread (two to three loaves per week) but more of the bread tastes good. We end up spending a lot of money some weeks or 'artisan' breads which I am not too sure are all that good for us. IMve been musing about making bread myself for a while so that I make Morelos GI (mother in law is diabetic in DH is watching his waistline) added protein/veg etc type breads. But I am really time poor. Could a bread maker be the solution? How do they work? Can you put things like seeds, olives etc in the bread? Do you have to kneed the bread or will the machine do it? Can you make cobs etc or onlybrick loaves?

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MNHQ

Panasonic seems to be the best. Yes, you can add seeds etc.

Mine is an old Panasonic but I have a rapid bake function which is great.

I used to use a bread maker- but I got bored with the bread it made- you can add seeds and stuff, but the texture is always a bit samey. I know make it by hand and rise it in the fridge during the day and bake it in the evening. Much better bread, loads of choice and it honestly doesn't take much more time, I promise!

Why do you think that an artisan loaf wouldn't be good for you?!

Sorry, I missed that you said you don't think artisan bread is good for you. What sort of bread do you want to make? I may have to retract my "it's easy peasy" promise.

Love our Panasonic

Waking up the the smell of fresh baked bread is priceless!

Although I did start dreaming about cookies the other morning 😂

It's just a lot of wheat. The artisan bread I mean. (We are vegetarian so we already eat way too much pasta, bread etc). I was hoping to use a greater variety of grains barley, oats, rye that kind of thing. I also wanted to add much more in terms of seeds, fruit, cheese and, veg into the bread so it's got a bit more to it than just carbs. It also gets a bit depressing eating so much wheat, it's hard to find non-wheat bread in the hell hole town where I live so it's either a small choice of fresh but monotonous artisan breads or an even smaller choice of disgusting prepackaged gluten free breads. Is it possible to make cobs, Vienna loaves etc in these things? Or only brick loaves-I don't live brick loaves that much for some reason.

I would make your own without a machine if you want to use lots of different flours.

You can use the bread maker to knead and prove then shape it and bake it, by hand but really not worth the expense. Get Brilliant Bread, by James Morton. He's got lots of useful stuff about fitting bread making into busy lives.

I got rid of ours because it only made brick-shaped samey dense-textured bread, regardless of what flour etc or recipe I used.

The bread was delicious in many ways, but it wasn't worth it to me in others so I ruthlessly decluttered it.

I'd live to make time to bake good bread though, so am going to check out book recc

I've just put a bowl of dough in the fridge to rise overnight. It took me 10 minutes to mix and knead it.

Our breadmakers saved a lot of effort over the years, especially when we had a house full of growing teens and counted loaves per day rather than loaves per week. We had two or three 'utility' loaves with different flours on an endless production cycle.

DH also produces a big variety of breads, sometimes doing all the processing in the breadmaker, sometimes using a mix of some breadmaker/non breadmaker steps. This includes breads with odd flours, veg and other ingredients.

Now its just two of us again its not so heavily used - I'm not a big bread eater and prefer rye types - so there is less utility breadmaking and more novelty bread again. To get the best out of them needs a bit of experimentation IME. He also uses it for making jam and other stuff.

If not sure then try making your own first by hand and see if you like the loaves you envisage making. Then work out how efficiently you can fit it into the day. You might find you don't need one for a couple of loaves a week.

Panasonics have done well for us. The first lasted best part of ten years intensive use so we replaced it with a newer model when it eventually died. On the scale of domestic appliances its not the most expensive but it does take up a chunk of space if you have a small kitchen.

How do you make jam in a bread maker?

I am on my second Panasonic, bought the first one about 15 years ago. I go through phases of using it a lot, then go off it for a bit, but I would recommend it. It's true that machine bread can taste a bit samey but it's great when you learn how to adapt recipes with seeds, spices, etc. I often just make the dough in the machine and then bake it in the oven as I prefer not to have tin-shaped loaves and it gets a crispier crust (it can get slightly damp and spongy in the machine). I am too lazy to mix and knead it myself so it's perfect that I can chuck everything in the machine and have the dough ready 3 hours later.

@Ttbb How do you make jam in a bread maker?

It has a jam setting. According to him it was similar to this method

It uses up our surplus softfruit and quinces and keeps the rest of the family in jam. He has done other stuff in it, sometimes just for the hell of it, sometimes with surprisingly good results.

For some ideas to experiment with try here

I have an old breadmaker, I use it to avoid the palm oil in commercial bread. Recipes can be adjusted to get a lighter bread and using different mixes of flours. I often use part white and part something else with grains, whatever I have to hand but rarely plain white. I have also made breads with yogurt, oil, spelt flour and various other things. Milk bread. Olives, sun dried tomatoes, herbs...You can make pretty much anything.

I also make cakes in it but am not as successful with those.

My bread maker is fabulous, I actually don't use it enough. It's a Kenwood.

I know this may sound barmy, but I insist on a bread maker where the pan is horizontal; a lot of them the pans are vertical.

I have this one.

This "Ankarsrum AKM 6290 B" kitchen machine (any colour) is the best "bread maker", in my opinion, and I'm not even willing to discuss it as I'm quite set in my opinion over this particular machine... A Kenwood similar machine could do, I guess. I'm sceptical to actual bread makers as there seems to be too many parts that need to be cleaned afterwards.

Help please. I have acquired a kenwood bread maker model 48220 but there's no instruction booklet. Can anyone pleasr tell me how it works? I've never used a bread maker before.
Thank you.

Have you tried looking for it online?

Are you sure it's a Kenwood and not a Morphy Richards?

We have made all of our own bread for 35 plus years- I say we as DH has muscled in on breadmaking since he retired. We use our Kenwood Chef, with the dough hook attachment - although we wore out one Chef. Most of the time he uses the Kenwood for the first kneading and do the second one by hand.
Usually we do a one third stong white flour and two thirds either wholemeal or a malted flour. We have a local flour milling company near us so have a good choice of flours and sometimes use rye flour etc. Always add seeds etc and have added olives or sun dried tomatoes as well. There is a Baker boys bread book which we use sometimes but usually make it up.
I have always thought that bread from a breadmaker is nowhere near as good as the stuff we make in the Kenwood, and also not all breadmakers make good gluten free bread.
There was a time when my son's though white sliced was luxury bread ( sob).

I made bread yesterday and for the first time used my Kenwood Chef to knead it. I was really pleased with the results and would definitely do that again.