Random question.

[rivka]

Do you have a bread machine? If so, what do you think of it?

It's that time of year again: my parents want to know what we would like for Christmas. I was thinking that a bread machine might be a good thing to have. We frequently buy artisanal-type bread from the grocery store, but (a) it's expensive, and (b) it goes stale so quickly. bosssio brought us a loaf of homemade bread after Colin was born, I think made in a bread machine, and it was delicious and stayed fresh for several days.

So is good bread-machine bread easy to make? Are there lots of different kinds? I've seen bread-machine mixes, but presumably you can also make bread in a machine from scratch, right? Any brand recommendations?

Comments

[ailbhe]

The only real downside of our breadmachine was that the mixing bowl couldn't go in the dishwasher, and the mixing paddle came off in the loaf and twice ended up being thrown in the bin by accident in the middle of a lump of dough.

Then I discovered that I really, really enjoy making bread, and doing it myself is faster (measured as time from "oh no, we have no bread" to "Ah, now there's bread") and makes less washing up, because the breadmachine washing up was fiddly.

I very much doubt they make them NOT to go in dishwashers any more, so I'd say you're golden. A friend of mine - rmc28 - has been doing a costing in how long it takes the bread machine to pay for itself since they got it.

Making our own bread, we eat 1.5kg of bread flour in about 3 days, usually. Faster if I make egg-milk-and-cinnamon bread, especially if we have friends over when it comes out of the oven.

Having a breadmaker on overnight makes getting up in the morning much nicer.