Does the bread maker save your family budget?

[Deleted User]

I have made bread for over 50 years, in the genes I think as I have bakers in my ancestry. Naturally it was all by hand for very many years and then I bought a bread maker to help, first was zojirushi followed by panasonic and am now on my second one. I often make bread by hand even now but only sourdough and only stretching and folding, the kenwood does the initial kneading these days.

SD is messier and takes longer so I also use the panasonic, which of course gives me a quicker loaf but also convenience and a much better quality loaf than I could buy. I use organic shiptons flours, organic yeast, sea salt, filtered water. Put those on a bread label and it would cost a lot of money, that is if I could find such a loaf, it does not cost me much. Just now I need some bread and am making 50% rye 50% wholemeal in the bm, which makes a dense loaf, which slices beautifully and has superb taste, so I don`t need great big slices to satisfy. The hole in the bottom is not a problem

tenuissent

That sounds delicious: rye and wholemeal. I too used my Kenwood in earlier years, but eventually the dough hook snapped and I never bothered to replace it.

For pizza bases and dry fried flatbreads I find it is the work of seconds to tip flour, salt, yeast, water into a bowl, stir it up and roll it out.

I also keep pieces of dough in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks, so that if I feel like a flatbread for lunch, again it takes seconds to roll out a small piece or two and dry fry it.

Dough is wonderful stuff!

bestill

I have a bread maker, only use it about once a week these days as the loaves are too small for all four or us. Nice for making special breads for special occasions or just dough for pizza'a etc.
I also make No Kneed breads, by hand. I've tweeked this recipe http://www.frugallivingnw.com/amazing-no-knead-bread-step-by-step-recipe/
I only make bread when I can't get reduced bread at L!dl.

pelirocco

I have had a couple of breadmakers and found them not to be worth the faff tbh. The loaves are smaller and denser , slicing them is very messy ! You may save a few pence per loaf , but once you factor in the cost of the machine it's going to take a while to break even .OP you asked if making your own bread saves the family budget ? I would think there are many more ways to save bigger sums of cash

Soworried

I use it for dough and jam making but not bread, I prefer to make that by hand.

molerat

We bake about 4-5 small loaves a week in our Panasonic. Wake up to the smell of a fresh loaf. Cost about 30p each. Hardly bought any shop bread for 5 years.

Teacher2

I use sliced granary bread for sandwiches and toast in the week for convenience but buy 'nice', artisanal bread at the weekend. Or, rather, I used to as the price went up from expensive to stupidly extravagant. My son bought me a bread maker for Christmas and I now make the nice stuff from scratch.

An 80p bag of strong, brown flour makes 2 1/2 to 3 loaves and I can use strong white, granary or spelt if I want to vary the mix. Brioche, fruit or bun mix are also easy and are delicious. The other ingredients are of negligible cost, a few pennies at most. the bread is delicious and, while it does stale quickly, I slice and freeze it and it's fine for as long as I need it.

So, in short, I don't think breadmaker bread is quite as cheap as cheap, sliced bread but it is much cheaper and just as nice or nicer than 'baker's loaves'.

where_are_we

Another vote for panasonic - one with a seed, nut and dried fruit dispenser. Still going strong after more than 10 years. Nothing beats the smell of a freshly baked loaf in the morning (set it up on the timer the night before). We are a family of vegans so we know what goes into our bread. We use olive oil, Lidl flour, less than half the recommended amount of salt, unrefined sugar, and a multitude of different seeds,nuts and dried fruit for a great variety. The dough program is handy for pizza bases and wonderful nanbread. You can mix wholemeal flour and white flour (in whatever proportion you like) in all these recipies to suit different tastes. It has none of the chemicals you get in shop bought bread so it only lasts a day - but if we have too much we slice it and freeze it.

DigForVictory

I've teenage boys. We have a breadmaker, but the loaves are tiny & anyway my husband prefers handmaking & an assortment of baking tins.

Despite this, we haven't managed to schedule the near industrial quantities need to feed the lads & their friends.

For custom loaves for specific reasons & occasions we use the machine but sadly the supermarket can undercut us even on spelt loaves...

tenuissent

I well remember this situation in the 70s and 80s: teenage family, visitors, students, farm workers all cutting off great slabs of bread at all hours of the day. I had much bigger tins then and doubled the quantities I made (by hand) twice a week.

There weren't a lot of alternatives back then - the nearest village shops sold the sort of cheap white bread that made us feel ill. It was honestly less trouble to buy huge sacks of flour direct from mills than to keep going shopping (sacks kept in dustbins because of mice).

That was when my Kenwood mixer dough hook snapped, and I think any bread making machine would have to be churning loaves out one at a time all day and night to keep people happy. We made butter from the cow and jam from the hedgerows then, too.