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

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

We used to have a bread machine, but the bread it made was only okay. And it was really almost as easy to put the ingredients into my standing mixer and then move 'em to the oven. So we decided it wasn't worth the counterspace and I think we gave it away. It was also annoying to clean.

I have no philosophical objection to them, of course, and if we had an easier-to-clean one that made better bread, we might have made a different decision.