breadmaker& slowcooker have i done the right thing?

davsidipp

today i have purchased a panasonic sd253 and a m.r slow cooker from amazon for£84.96 for the both of them which seems a good deal. need to cut down on trips to supermarket as spending is getting out of control for food.ive never used one before are they easy to use? what flour do some of you use and what yeast any help please.;)

skippy64

Snap !! We've just got the SD253 bread maker off ebay and have been busy making bread/pizza dough for the last couple of days. We bought strong plain flour (we bought the flour that was packaged for bread makers) from a supermarket & Hovis Fast action Bread Yeast (pre-packaged). We also bought dried skimmed milk powder, ordinary table salt and we have just followed the recipes so far that are in the manual that came with the bread maker. We have made an ordinary loaf, milk loaf, italian bread dough for pizza base and we are just waiting for a egg-enriched white loaf to finish baking ( that one was from a bread machine book, not the panasonic manual )
The loaves we have made so far have been used for kids sandwiches for school & our lunch time sandwiches also. Hope you have success on your first loaf !!

mirry

great move, I think it saves money in alot of ways.

I have a bread maker ,slow cooker and a steamer which are much cheaper to run than using gas. The food tastes loads nicer and you know what your eating !

davsidipp

thanks skippy54 i know the panasonic is dearer than alot of models but it has a good write up in most places i have looked at cant wait for it to come and start baking as well as keeping me out of the supermarket thanks

Ticklemouse

Hi

I have a Russell Hobbs BM - very similar to the Panny you have. They are very easy to use and generally make fab bread. However - you may have a few disasters or maybe some loaves you don't like as much, initially. it's a case of trial and error because everyone's tastes differ. I use about 1/8th tsp of salt per 600gms flour when the recipe says about 1 1/2 tsp!! Keep persevering and make a note of what you alter from the recipe so you can re-create (or not ) next time.

As for flour, I do buy extra strong for BM's. I use either Tesco's own (51p) or Lidl's (49p) although some people make their loaves with value plain flour. Again - it's a matter of taste.

I use the dried easy blend yeast (Allinson's, in an orange tin) 99p from Tesco's or even Holland and Barrett. No need to refridgerate and I use a heaped tsp per large loaf.

HTH

davsidipp

ticklemouse thanks for those tips i will try that out when they come my hands are itching to get going on the breadmaker!

squeaky

These might help while away the hours while you're waiting for delivery...

The Complete Breadmaking Collection

The Complete Slow Cooker Collection

JillD_2

I am newish toi MoneySaving, its all gone a bit pete-tong over the last year.

We use our BM quite a lot. A loaf comes out at about 30p I think.
You will get a recipe book with it.

Here are my tips:
You dont have to use the strong bread flour, value supermaret own flour is just as good - I use Asda smart price.
You also don't need to add the skimmed milk powder, dont know why they say to use it.
I always halve the amount of salt they say to use otherwise its too salty.
Some people say to reduce (halve) the amount of sugar but I haven't tried this and it does always taste a little sweeter than shop bread.
It is possibe to use fresh yeast and better still some supermarkets give away fresh yeast FOR FREE!!!! I read this yesterday and thought it couildn't be fre, but my husband went to Asda today and asked for some and he got a block of it FOR FREE!!!
So now you are down to paying for - cheapy flour, a bit of salt, a bit of sugar and a bit of oil. Bargain!
I haven't tried the fresh yeast yet but as I understand it you can freeze it in ice cube try - well thats what I did - then put a frozen cube of it in some water and couple teaspoons sugar to activate for an hour or so - someone correct me if I'm wrong - then this makes up part of your water mixture for the bread. Planning to try this tomorrow - wish me luck!
So apart from a tiny bit of the other dry things all you are paying for is electricity and flour!
We spend £4 on posh loaves of bread a week, reckon this will be halved easily with BM.
We also make sponge cakes and pizza dough with it.

Oh yeah, if you want to make brown bread use half white flour and half brown flour, otherwise if you use all brown flour it comes out very heavy.

If your model letas you and you want to leave it to cook overnight (lovely smell of bread firswt thing in the morning) make sure you put the yeast on top of the dsried ingredient and don't let the water touch it or it activates too soon.

Always get bread out as soon as its finished or the crust gets too hard.

I quite often chuch in ahadful of whatever seeds we have around - sunfloeer, poppy, pumpkin. Gives bron bread a lovely nutty flavour.

For pizzas we roll out dough quite thin and I use Ragu sauce for the tomato-y bit. My kids have this in their pasta so I just leave a few tablespoons on the jar.
My recipe book says pizza dough and finished loaves can be frozen though I haven't tried this yet.

The only down side to B bread is it doesn't last very long - everyoine loves it so it all gets eaten very quickly. I made a loaf this afternoon -all gone already.

PHEW!!

Now for my slow cooker tips -
well again we use ours loads. I work 2 days full time and as we have 2 kids aged 3 and 2 its manic getting them home and to bed those nights. So both those days are slow cooker days in our house.
i prepare the veg (we are veggie) and leave in the fridge in a bowl of water overnight (covered with cliong film, onions very smelly in the fridge), then in the morning tip it in with any meat substitute stuff and any tins of tomatoes etc required and any spices etc then switch on and leave all day.
I always err on the side of too much water - its easier to thicken a sauce with some cornflour than it is to scrape burny bits off the edges!
we can then just serve it up as soon as we are done with the kids.

Really yummy!

Good luck, I do hope you have fun experimenting with them both!!
Jill

ps sorry this was so long!

davsidipp

thanks jilld your tips are good other posters have said in other posts about breadmakers to use ord flour will give that a go will let everyone know when i have a bash at making the bread cant wait many thanks to everone who posted.

foreverskint

whilst I would agree that you can use ordinary flour, you will find that for the very nicest bread, strong flour is far superior. Infact, the extra strong flour is even better, and although it is a little more expensive (adds around 10p per loaf), It's worth it.

why go to the trouble of making your own bread if it's not too nice?

JillD_2

Sorry my last post was so long!
Just to add I made a loaf with (free from Asda) frozen fresh yeast (does that make sense?) today and it is SCRUMMY. Cost worked at about 16p for the loaf!!