Bread maker vs bought bread ££££

Shinedog12

I always make my own bread.
I think it's loads cheaper than shop bought....although I haven't accounted for the electricity used!
I bake 2-3 loaves a day with my bread maker. (Nothing like the smell of fresh bread in the morning )

peakoilisnow

I use a Panasonic SD253 - it's brilliant. Foolproof. Even I can't mess up :-)

I have also used non-bread machine dried yeast - put it in warm water for 15 mins with sugar and it froths up then put it in the BM with the rest of the ingredients.

About 2 years ago I calculated the cost of a 400g loaf, 50% organic wholemeal 50% non organic white flour, and it came out to 32p. Electricity (which I also monitored) was 6p. Let's say 40p for that loaf.

Since then prices have gone up and I've been home milling my wheat, which is a tad more expensive, plus I often add seeds, oats etc. So I reckon 50p for a basic loaf, and 60 p for a "premium one".

This is way better than supermarket bread and I'll never go back

Stillsmiling

We "bought" a Panasonic SD253 with our Nectar points and we use it all the time. I bake bread every other day (unless we all have sandwiches and then I bake each day). It's easy and tastes good and the texture is far better than I got from my old breadmaker (which I stopped using because the bread was stodgy!).

Only problem is that my youngest (she's 4) has decided she doesn't like the bread because I put wine in it. I don't put wine in it (that would be very odd!) and I can't work out what she thinks is wine. If I argue she insists she's right!! LOL

autismmum

could someone of told her yeast is in alcohol?? i know it sounds weird but once my eldest now 17 was told when he was 6 that boobs were called mushrooms....... many years of mushroom avoidance later... even now he picks them out of his food.. odd isnt it but i was thinking maybee shes learnt something about yeast??

LilMissEmmylou

still smiling have u tried getting her to help make the bread and keep a glass of wine beside it... make the bread and say " look no wine went into it did it?" and hopefully she will taste the bread when its cooked - good luck x

siaoeh

hi to all breadmaker experts, I'm pretty new to this breadmaking thingy and desperately need some advice

we accquired a breville compact breadmaker on a bargain price recently but after trying to bake a loaf of basic white bread, we found it was horrible! I followed the instructions to a T and used the breadmix from Lakeland (on a bargain price as well obviously) which is supposed to be brilliant (why else would anyone buy them at that price?) the crust was nice and err crusty, but there was no nice freshly baked bread smell, and the bread itself wasn't too tasty either

is there any secret to using a breadmaker I should know abt before trying another loaf and set ourselves up for more disappointments?

Stillsmiling

siaoeh I would try making one following a normal recipe - sorry but I'm not sure what the Lakeland bread mix is. Personally I think a lot does depend on the breadmaker. Our old one was rubbish and the crust was really hard and the bread was stodgy. We splashed out on a Panasonic (got to love nectar points - they paid for it!) and that is MUCH better. The smell is lovely, the bread is good and it has 3 crust settings which is great.

You do need to experiment with different recipes, try a different one and see how that turns out.

cheerfulness4

siaoeh - something doesn't seem right. In my house you can smell the bread while still laying in bed when its been programmed to come on for a breakfast loaf.
I've only used mixes a couple of times but I prefer starting from scratch from a recipe.

squeaky

There's a collection of threads covering all aspects of breadmaking here:-

The Complete Breadmaking Collection

It covers most machine makes, tips, recipes, hints, troubleshooting, sources... in fact, just about everything you ever wanted to know about breadmaking.

HTH

Crabman

Hi, I'll move this over to the OS Board

Squeaky beat me to the link

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