I've tried a (friend's) breadmaker, out of curiosity, but returned to my trusty Kenwood. It takes no more than five minutes to toss the ingredients into the bowl and knead them. I leave the dough in the bowl until it's risen, knock it back with a quick power burst, shape it, then pop into a tin for a final rise. When it is nearly finished rising, I turn on the oven and pop it in. Total 'hands-on' time is about 7 or 8 minutes.
Sheila
As someone else already said, Panasonic is the only one worth having. The others generally don't last anywhere near as long (although yours seems to at 10 years - depends how often it's used), and can be variable quality. My Panasonic is 12 years old, probably 2 loaves a week, and sometimes used additionally just for kneeding dough.
Temperature - the bread machine should get that right. For fast bake programmes, I preheat the water in the microwave.
Salt - only affects taste, not baking (unless you chucked in so much it killed the yeast).
Too much yeast or too much water can in theory cause the bread to over-rise, and very likely collapse after baking finished. These should be accurately measured, along with the flour. I have deliberately varied yeast and water to see what the effect is, but never had your problem happen. Too little water makes it too hard for the breadmaker to kneed the bread, and less yeast makes a smaller denser loaf.
The fat is another variable (usually butter, but can be olive oil for some breads). It affects taste and texture and how long the loaf lasts before it goes stale. The amount does not seem to be critical IME.
Someone mentioned vitamin C. Some bread making yeast contains it. My current one doesn't, and I haven't needed to add any. The one I used to use did, and I didn't notice any difference.
I haven't tried varying sugar. It feeds the yeast, but I suspect the flour might too to some extent so it might not be critical. If I'm varying yeast (e.g. to make a dense loaf, then I reduce sugar by same amount.
If you are making wholemeal bread, make sure the flour is fresh. IME, the quality of loaf drops well before the flour gets to its use-by date, and can cause the top to collapse. White flour seems to be more forgiving, and works well past its date. Make sure it's bread flour too (needs to be at least 11g protein per 100g flour, which should be stated on the packet). If you're mixing in something like rye flour for taste, then you really do need high protein base flour as the rye flour will dilute it down.
The only failures I've had from my Panasonic are when I've done something wrong, e.g. forgotten to put in the yeast (you end up with a solid lump of dough), forgotten to put in the kneeding paddle (gets to the end and looks like a puddle of stodge), forgotten to put in the salt (looks fine, tastes of absolutely nothing and I couldn't eat it).
If we had the space, I might have a Kenwood Chef (or whatever) as well. But I am pretty sure that the bread-maker uses much less electricity than our oven. So, unless cooking something else at much the same time, I hold that as an advantage of the bread-maker.
One of the reasons I don't want a breadmaker, is lack of space for single-purpose appliances. My cooker has two ovens, one much smaller than the other, which I use for little things like bread - and until the central heating is redone, sometime next year, I have the oven in the Rayburn.
Assuming my memory is correct, the SD255 has an additional specialised paddle (and, I presume, more powerful motor) to allow it to cope with kneading rye flour to make rye bread. As others have said, it also has a tray to allow you to preload it with nuts and raisins and so on for bread with extras added to it.
You can add rye flour to the SD254, but not too much or else the motor may not be able to cope and burn itself out.
You can also add things like nuts and so on to the SD254, but you have to do it manually and partway through the process (there is an option you can select for this, which beeps at the appropriate time) The reason they say you shouldn't really add them right at the beginning is that, being hard and sometimes with slightly non-blunt edges, they could scrape some of the non- stick material off the baking tin.
I tend to use my panasonic SD254 as only part of the breadmaking that I do: I sometimes use it to do the whole thing; sometimes to just prepare the dough; and sometimes I do it all manually (without any food processor of any kind at all) May be it is me, but I could be coming round to the notion that doing it all by hand might turn out the better bread, though I need more testing and better comparisons, as I tend to bake different kinds of bread with the three kinds of preparation, and so I may not be able to compare like with like so often (meaning bias may be present - you can tell I was a research/statistics advisor in my working life.)
I had the same problem with a Morphy Richards breadmaker - very inconsistent results however closely I followed the instructions. Then I read somewhere the advice that to get a perfect loaf the secret is to add the yeast first to the water. In the Morphy Richards instructions the yeast is always the last ingredient so sits on top of the flour etc in the dry. I have changed to this new method and have not had a single failure. I normally fill the breadmaker in the evening and use the timer to produce a warm loaf for breakfast so I can see this might give the yeast a start. May not make any difference if you do not use the timer
Peter
I'm fed up with my wife complaining about her bread winner !!
Yes, but you can understand her point :)
The little ovens are not necessarily cheaper to run than the bigger oven, especially if the big oven is fanned.
Owain
Thanks Dave - I shouldn't be admitting this; I'm retired and my wife is the bread-winner and the bread-maker. I do feel quite seriously threatened by all the guys in this forum who do the bread making in their house - and ashamed too. I can see that this looks like being a male preserve I should be joining.
My original posting was a request to find a forum on the bread making topic - I had no idea I would out some 25 closet male bread makers (sorry Sheila ! you should be basking in the glory of being one of the very few ladies here )
Rob
I think it's more likely because after 20 minutes kneading, they'd be broken into pieces. I sometimes make ciabatta with olives, and you have to add the olives when there's only a few minutes of kneading left, or you might as well have liquidised them because they will be smashed into tiny pieces. My SD206 predates the ones with the nut trays, so I just have to remember to add by hand. It has the pause and beep for additions, but that's still too soon for soft items like olives and some fruit.
For sunflower seeds in brown bread, I find they're better if they have soaked in water first. This makes them ideal for a delayed start loaf where you can leave them soaking in the water during the delay time (and not use the nut tray). Add a little extra water in this case.
I open the lid and peek in sometimes; except during the final baking phase, that's harmless. Actually, after the beating down (about 1:15 before the end), if I remember, I take the kneading paddle out, so I don't get a loaf with a slot in the bottom.
Also, when there's about 0:50 to go, depending on the loaf, I'll paint the top with egg white and sprinkle on poppy seeds.
Nothing to be ashamed of.
I would be proud of her.
But who sleeps with the milkman:-)?
Adam
They come up to temperature more quickly. Time is money!
Check out "flour improver" on Ebay... The amount of water in the mix is critical and varies with different flours so its difficult to put a hard figure on the quantity required.
AI found the following for a list of dough enhancers and improvers. They include items that may be more generally available in a kitchen anyway. I see that they include the powdered ginger I mentioned previously. I agree that the amount of water is a key issue, and I would also add that its temperature can be very important. I found that keeping notes of what I tried and then matching that up with the results helped me tweak many recipes so that the bread was better in the end.
AAArghh!
Here's the link:
In message , ARWadsworth writes
Sue (Linley Lane, number 22)
The milkwoman !! And that of course has two translations!!
That is an interesting tip. Thanks.
Dave
No it won't. I have been using a bread maker for less than a year and I have found out that the flour to water content is critical.
I presume that the b maker recipes are in cup measures, if so, stop right there.
Cups are invariably metric these days.
Flour measured in cups can vary by quite a large percentage, depending on how it is got from the bag of flour. I don't have my research papers available at the moment, but I can post them on here if you need the data.
Basically, strong, or bread flour should weigh 135 grammes per cup. water should measure 250 grammes per cup. Cup measurements look to have been standardise in the UK and to the East to 250 grammes/mL of water. US cups are different in capacity. Beware of using table spoons, as these vary across the world. Always weigh the ingredients in (forgive the expression) grammes, as that is the only universal measure these days, that you can compare to.
Measure flour by flowing it out of the bag and you should end up with about 135 grammes per cup. Spoon it out and you will end up with a larger percentage and hence a greater weight. Scoop it out of the bag with the measuring cup and you will end up with a much larger weight of flour. I think I got the figures from flow to scooped from between 135 g to over 165 g.
The more flour you have, the lower the rise of the bread.
Rather than buy a new BM go to Tesco and buy a digital scale for about £10-00
My BM has a recipe for plain white that has
1 1/2 cups of water (12 fl ounces, read it from the bottom of the meniscus.) Critical. 1 tbsp of oil (not critical) tsp of salt (not critical) 3 1/2 cups of strong white bread flour. Critical 1 tsp of white sugar. Not critical 2 tsp of fast action yeast, sachets are usually a touch more than the recipe requires, but not criticalThis is the way I have to load the bread maker, in case you set the delay timer for overnight baking. You have got to separate the water and salt from the yeast. Salt slows the rise, sugar encourages it
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