I'm not satisfied with the breadmaker

I began doing bread by hand, and then used my Kitchenaid mixer to mix the dough, which I then finished by hand. When I got a breadmaker I began using it to mix the dough, which I then finished by hand. Now I use the Kitchenaid to mix the dough unless I'm using the Kitchenaid for something else at the time. If so, I use the breadmaker to mix the dough. The long and short of it is that I no longer mix dough by hand, and I NEVER use the breadmaker to do the entire breadmaking process.

NEVER store bread in the fridge. If you make several loaves, freeze the excess. They take only a couple of hours at room temp to thaw. Graham

I started as a pre-teen making bread by hand. I got a bread machine and after a few batches gave it away much for the same reasons you cite. Then I started making dough with the Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I liked the mixer overall, it gave good results in a short time with little effort. Next I tried the food processor. I like the FP because it is very quick and unlike the stand mixer, there is never a mess. The mixer can send flour all over your kitchen if you aren't careful. However, it can make more dough in a single batch than the FP. My method of choice is now the FP as I can make enough dough for a dozen rolls, a couple of pizzas, or a loaf of bread in under 5 minutes without any mess. If I were baking for a large family, I would probably use the stand mixer.

I wouldn't mix dough in the living room, but that' just me. If nothing else, you need to be standing up to knead dough. You should be using the weight of your body, not the strength of your arms. You can't get good leverage while sitting down.

Making bread is mostly technique and experience. Try some methods (hand, mixer, or FP) and practice. See what works best for you. You can store dough in the refrigerator for several days and bake it as needed. In fact, up to a point, this will improve the flavor and texture of the bread. I agree that you should not store baked goods in the refrigerator as they go stale faster.

As for the bread machine, I'm sure that there are wonderful machines that meet the needs of many people. They just don't make any sense for me.

Too much flour. You're measuring inappropriately.

I'd venture a guess that you're scooping right out of the bag, which guarantees that the flour is going to be somewhat packed.

I don't understand why people who have an interest in baking own these things.

The bread machine is a perfect tool for someone who has no interest in baking but who insists on having a little round loaf of fresh bread on demand, along with the associated baking smells. It'd be great for that, assuming it works reliably.

A lot of people will now defend their ownership of a bread machine as a machine that they don't use to automatically make bread. Which i find confusing. It can't be all that good as a stand mixer compared to, for example, a 20 year old Bosch Universal picked up at a thrift store for $10.

Not that I'm bragging or anything. Now that i have a real income again i really ought to upgrade.

Yanno, I get really annoyed by comments like this. I'm a pretty good baker, if I say so myself. I *can* make my own bread by hand.

I have a choice, though. I can make bread by hand twice a week, or I can do the laundry, or make dinner, or make fresh cookies for the kids' lunchboxes. I have shoulder problems, and if I choose to make bread by hand, I cannot do -anything- else that involves shoulder/arm action for about a day.

I own a bread machine. I use it 3 or 4 times a week. It makes good bread, by which I mean that it's consistent from loaf to loaf, and

*MY KIDS LIKE IT* for their sandwiches. This last point is one of the big reasons I use the machine. It costs a hell of a lot less than the store bread that they will eat, and I don't have to buy 3-4 loaves and keep them in the freezer. (and still have to run out to the store on Sunday so there's bread for Monday's lunchboxes.)

I'd rather my family have a home-cooked dinner every night and home-made cookies in their lunches than hand-made bread.

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@chartermi.net

Too much flour, not enough yeast (or not enough sugar for the yeast), probably. Did you scoop the flour right out of the bag? That's bound to give you trouble, as flour settles and you wound up with more flour in the pan than the recipe can accomodate. Maybe not enough water. Baking, especially bread, is not something you can do by 'following instructions to the letter'. If it's dry, you need more water, if it's damp you need less. If your yeast is old, you may need more of it, or more sugar.

A loaf of bread out of the bread machine lasts our family 2-3 days (depending on how many people have a sandwich as an afternoon snack). A storebought loaf of bread will last 3-4 days.

It's cheaper to run a bread machine than it is to run to the store and buy a loaf of bread, even if you buy it on a regular shopping trip (unless you can walk to the store). Yes, even including the cost of electricity. (It only pulls 500W when it's actually mixing the bread. The rest of the time it's pulling only enough to run the timer. When it's baking, it probably pulls more, but less than an electric oven would.)

I learned how to make bread by hand, and shifted to using a bread machine when I blew out a shoulder, and kneading dough became out of the question. You probably won't be able to make bread while you're sitting on the floor in the living room, though. Kneading dough requires lots of pushing down into the dough, and it's difficult to do that while sitting on the floor.

Unbaked dough can easily be left in the fridge (covered) or baked loaves put in the freezer. You could even half-bake a loaf, freeze it, and then finish baking it later.

-- Jenn Ridley : snipped-for-privacy@chartermi.net

I'm with you Jenn. I have a bread maker that is going on 15 years old. It makes great bread. I use the dough cycle more often. I also on occasion make bread completely by hand. OK I use the KitchenAide mixer and then go by hand from then on. A bread machine isn't a magic machine it does take a little time to get to know it. To find the recipes with the amounts that work perfectly for your machine. One does have to spend a little time in the beginning of a cycle to make sure the dough is right before one runs off to leave it to do what it does best. That 10-15 minutes of time will save me 4 hours once I can leave the machine to make bread. It can really be a time saver. I do know that some machines are better than others. My mom bought one in the fall and though it made bread bread it did a lot of rocking and rolling and threaten to jump off the counter with each loaf. For Christmas she got a horizontal Zoji and it works great. We made bread and pizza dough with success.

Lynne

Ah, breadmakers. Reminds me of this great new appliance I saw on Saturday Night Live called "Mr Tea".

It's basically a funnel held up by a plastic stand. You put your teabag into your teacup, place it under Mr Tea's funnel, then pour the hot water into the Mr Tea funnel. Voila, tea in your cup. Amazing.

Whenever I see a breadmaker I think "Mr Bread".

That said, here's a way you can have fresh baked bread at home every day and only have to mix it twice a week, which is where most of the work is. I like this method better than trying to "keep" the baked bread by leaving it out or freezing it, which I think diminishes the quality too much.

Basically you mix the dough, put it in your pans, then put them the fridge. If your fridge is at a low enough temperature the fermentation will be slow enough that they can be pulled out and baked as needed over a period of a few days. There's always a loaf in the fridge ready for the oven. Here's what you do.

Mix your dough using a basic sponge method, then load your pans. Bake one right away, cover the rest in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge. Pan #2 to gets baked off a day later, pan #3 gets baked a day after that, etc.

The longer the dough stays in the fridge the better the flavor and texture, but the oven spring will diminish. I find they're good for up to 3 days, generally, but on the next day they're still good for things that don't require as much oven spring like pizza dough and bread sticks.

Let me know how well it makes cookies, pie pastry, whipped cearm, and merangue. I would buy a bread maker that could do that - really I would.

Those mixes really are a god send. They spare you from getting the flour from the pantry.

Time must work different where you live. I can make a batch of dough in about 5 minutes in the FP. After that, it rises without any supervision for a couple of hours. Then it takes about 5 minutes to make up the final product. Another hour or so of unsupervised proofing and then into the oven. So in total I might spend 15 hands-on minutes baking bread. I wish that I could turn that 15 minutes into four "saved" hours, but honestly I think you would have to change the rules of physics first.

4 hours for a baked and cooled loaf of bread. Did you one better... I spent 10 minutes and had a loaf of bread ready to eat without having to change any laws of physics. Didn't have to fool with making up a final product... didn't have to preheat an oven and place in oven... didn't have to set a timer... didn't have to turn out on a cooling rack. Seems the time warp is happening in your kitchen.

Lynne

Nope. You didn't save any time at all. You just put your time in up-front and I did mine in a couple of steps. I guess if you want to dump and run, then the bread maker is for you. Thankfully I don't have that kind of lifestyle.