Do they do the job?
I’ve been tempted to get one, but my friends who got them always seem to make heavy nut breads.
I like regular French baguettes or the equivalent in smaller sandwich rolls.
Can it do that kind?
And do you need expensive packets of mix to do it, or can you use bulk flour and yeast?
I used my bread machine to do regular white bread, using bulk bread flour and yeast from Sam’s. It worked just fine, although I’ve found that I prefer making bread the old-fashioned way, mixing and kneading it myself. It’s not really a lot of work, and you get regular-shaped loaves.
StG
Do they do the job? ------ Yep, although the results IME tend to be a bit heavier than usual.
I like regular French baguettes or the equivalent in smaller sandwich rolls. Can it do that kind?-----------Mine only makes full or 1/2 loaves. Maybe someone will come in who knows of a machine that will do rolls. OR–you could use the machine to make your dough but then take it out and separate it into rolls and cook it in your oven.
And do you need expensive packets of mix to do it, or can you use bulk flour and yeast?----------You can definitely do it without the pre-packaged mixes. I usually use Bread flour instead of bulk, but otherwise you could do pretty much any recipe you wanted in a good machine.
The biggest perk with mine is the timer. I can dump in the ingredients before I go to bed, set the timer, and wake up to just-finished, wonderfully warm bread. Yummy!
I like mine. It’s so convenient to set load the ingredients, set the timer and then come home from work to fresh, piping hot bread. I use it as much for pizza dough as for bread, too.
I used to bake my own bread by hand, and the bread-machine breads I’ve eaten tended, IMO, to be a tad dense and lacking in crust.
I’ve read from several sources that the best results come from using the machine to knead dough and then shaping and baking the bread in a regular oven, so now I’m curious: If I were to get back to baking again, does anyone have any opinions on kneading the dough by hand vs. bread machine vs. Kitchenaid mixer vs. food processor?
I love mine. I use the “dough” setting to make french bread dough and cook it in my oven (I don’t like the “scrunched” look of the bread machine pan).
I also make pizza dough and cookie dough and all sorts of other things. I normally don’t make plain white bread (I rather have store bought since I don’t eat bread much in general) but I love the dough setting and hand rolling what I want.
My experience with them is that they are the fondue set of the new millennium.
You’ll use it two or three times, and the results will be pretty good - not quite as good as the hot bread shop, but still pretty good. But then every time you think about using it it will be too much hassle and it’ll sit on a shelf collecting dust.
As I said, this is my experience. It’s also that of the two people I gave the bread maker to on indefinite loan because I wasn’t using it (they both gave it back because they weren’t using it either) and everyone else that I know has one.
I can tell this because every so often someone will see it sitting on the counter and say “a bread maker! How well do they work?” and everyone else will tell them that they’re pretty good but they never use theirs.
So they’re not a bad conversation piece.
I like mine. I tend to use it in spurts, and then I put it in the basement for a month or two. Then it comes out again, and I make bread for several weeks, and then back it goes. I don’t get tired of it that way, and I don’t see it on my counter and feel guilty that I’m not using it enough.
I enjoyed it much more once I got some interesting bread machine cookbooks, and started making unusual breads.
I’ve wanted to engineer a “small appliance swap” with friends. It seems almost everyone has a wok, or waffle iron, or ice cream maker, or whatever which doesn’t get used terribly often. I wouldn’t mind using some of those appliances, but I don’t want to buy them. I’d love to borrow someone else’s for awhile, giving them my kitchenaid or bread machine in the interim.
We use ours fairly regularly. Mostly for white bread, which comes out great on the regular cycle and adequate if you use the rapid cycle.
Much easier than baking bread from scratch – just dump in the ingredients, set it, and let it work. And the timer lets you have hot bread whenever you want it.
If by “French baguettes” you mean honest-to-Og bread loaves with a wonderful, crunchy crust, I can’t believe any machine on the market could possibly reproduce the genuine article. Baking French bread requires high heat and a pan of water in the oven.
On the other hand, if you’re referring to the faux French rolls that are found on the bread shelf of a supermarket, well…better you than me.
I use mine fairly often, but I’ve never been satisfied with the results, and even have to tinker with the proportions in the packaged mix to get something that rates as okay.
However, as a dough mixer and preparer, it’s great. I let the machine do the hard work, then put the dough in a pan, let it rise and bake it in the oven. Very good results.
Mine collects dust nicely. I keep it next to the fondue set, the George Foreman grill, my food processor, and the ice cream maker.
I use mine often. I bought a bread machine recipe book, which gives me more variety. In making bread by hand, you adjust the recipe as you go, adding more flour or liquid to make it “feel” right. In a machine, it’s the same, except you do all the adjustment in the first half hour. You adjust to make it look right. The dough should come together in a single lump with no rough breaks it as it writhes around. Breaks? Add water, a little at a time. When the mixing stops, it should not settle like batter. If it does, add flour.
I tried making bread by hand a few years back, and I could never get the hang of it. Maybe it’s because I don’t have nonstick hands.
The bread is good, but not as good as ‘real’ homemade. And slicing it is a pain in the neck.
I used mine a few times, then went back to buying sliced bread in the grocery store, saying I’d use it again ‘one of these days.’ Looking back, not the best use of money.
My mom’s walked off the kitchen counter during operation and committed suicide. Before that it was a good machine.
My wife really wanted a bread machine, so we went out and got one.
Then the instructions intimidated her, so she asked me to run through a loaf of bread, so she could watch me and learn how.
Nowadays, I pretty much make all the bread… on her bread machine. It’s handy. If you use the mixes, your loaves are going to wind up a bit on the heavy side, but if you use ordinary yeast and bulk flour (or most ordinary bread recipes), it’ll still come out fine.
I had a cheap one which gave OK results. It died after 4 years of constant use and I bought an incredibly cheap and nasty one which made crap bread.
I make gluten-free bread and a good breadmaker is a godsend for that. Supermarket GF bread is $5 a loaf and not nice at all. I have now bought the most expensive breadmaker on the market and it makes excellent GF bread. I don’t think it’s worth the extra hundred dollars for the gluten breads though unless you are a very committed breadbaker. The best results I’ve seen have been when the dough is made in the breadmaker and then baked in the oven.
I use mine pretty regularly to make honey wheat bread and occasionally white bread. I don’t care to bake the bread in the machine, though, and usually bake it in the oven, unless I’ve programmed it for dinner or something.
I forgot that you can mix other types of dough, so I’ll look into that and check back with you later…
I’ve found that bread machine bread often comes out a lot denser and heavier than oven-baked, as well. I use my bread machine mostly to knead and raise the dough, then form the loaf by hand for oven baking. In the winter, my kitchen (on the north side of my old house) sometimes gets too cold for dough to raise properly, and the temp control inside the ABM is just right.
On the good side, a lot of people either buy an ABM or get one for a gift and never use it - so you don’t have to spend a lot of money on one. Just go to a garage sale or church rummage sale and I guarantee you can get one for $10 or less. I’m on my second machine (horror story follows) and I bought it brand new, still in the box, at a church sale for $2.
The fate of my first machine is why I don’t set the timer on this one to run when I’m sleeping or not home. A batch of bread I was baking rose too aggressively and some of the dough hit the heating element. The machine caught on fire on my kitchen counter, melted the lid, and the flames were licking at the wall cupboard when the smoke detector went off. Good thing I keep a fire extinguisher by the stove. I never run the damn thing unless I’m in the house now. YMMV of course.
I like mine and use it quite a lot. I used to use it for all my bread needs, but I found I eat too much bread when the homemade stuff is available all the time. So now I use it to make a loaf of bread for certain meals – we just had Honey French last night with stew. I also use it for rolls and pizza crust, letting the machine do the mixing and kneading and shaping the crust myself. Some recipes are lighter than others, BTW. I have a good, very light Portuguese White bread recipe, the aforementioned Honey French is also very light. I have an excellent Garlic Roll recipe and a very good Cinnamon Roll recipe. I always make the cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning.