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

[tavella.livejournal.com]

I'm really puzzled by the comments about cleanup. I've never had to clean mine, not in the sense of a dishwasher or scrubbing it with soap. It gets a little crust around the beater, but it's baked so I can break it off easily by hand, and then just wipe it and the rest of the baking container with a paper towel.

[namedphoenix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's basically how I deal with it. I've never seen "modern" breadmakers with machine washable parts, and stuff. Only when the pumpkin bread exploded in it's goopiness (I should have listened to myself) have I ever had problems with it.

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Now I'm becoming nervous about having to replace mine if it ever breaks. Paddles getting stuck in the bread? Trouble cleaning it? No crust? Mine makes delicious brown crust, apparently I have some miracle of Welbilt-ness or something...

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I think I was an early adopter. I had to get bits of crust out of a cylinder that didn't come out of the machine, plus get the beater out of the loaf without destroying it and then washing that at the sink. It was just more than I thought was worth.