thinking about buying a breadmaker? wait - read - mine makes sausages

Sujamjen

My Kenwood is over 30 years old and for cakes, liquidising etc it's great but I don't make bread in it anymore as the last time I did so I had smoke pouring out of the motor!! :eek: I have now got a breadmaker and it is wonderful to be able to chuck the ingredients in and leave it to get on with making and baking while I'm doing other things. Eg, tonight I came in from work and noticed my teenage gannets had almost cleared out the bread bin, so before I did anything else I set the breadmaker to work, couple of hours later the bread was ready and all for about 2mins of my time!
I guess however, for people who love the physical 'hands on' part of breadmaking or have lots of spare time then a breadmaker would just be an expensive dust gatherer.

maryb

Pooky wrote:

I have a cheapie mixer along side my BM - i've got dough hooks too but I wouldn't be without the BM, I like to know I can chuck it all in one pot - switch it on and leave it - I'm hopeless at timings and often forget i'm cooking something - would happen all the time with the bread.

As I said in the previous thread - i'm eating less bread because it's more filling and I've now lost over a stone and a half. If i've got bread left over that I won't be using the next day, I'll slice it and freeze it.

Would love to have a go at making sausages tho - anyone know of any cheap machines I could try????

If you have got a mincer you may be able to get the sausage filling tubes to fit on them. Mine is a Porkert mincer and i got a set of three tubes for £5. It was really easy filling the sausage skins (I work near Smithfield meat market so I was able to get the skins from the butcher's supply shop there). However the great thing is that the tubes fit the Kenwood 900 series mincer whereas if you look on ebay you will see just the tubes going for about £15.
I can recommend the River Cottage website if you are interested in having a go at making sausages - lots of information and links

Bogof_Babe

Alright, I have dug my Kenwood Chef (complete with dough hook ) out from the loft (or "behind the scenes" as we call it, living in a dormer bungalow with the loft straight off the bedroom!).

In the process I noticed it was standing on a plastic storage box, which I opened with considerable trepidation, to find dozens of old (I mean OLD) toiletries in there, largely covered with red gunk from a leaked bottle of henna shampoo, leading to a major de-clutter which has taken care of my afternoon! So thanks for this thread .

Anyway I digress - now what I want is a cheap bread recipe. I used to have a breadmaker but found I only bought the pre-packs @ around the same price as a good quality loaf, and twice the price of a cheapie, so I gave the BM away to my sister. The bread was never that good anyway .

So is it really possible to make a full sized loaf for less than a 47p Co-op one? Also it must be simple and straightforward or I know I won't bother!

Any suggestions/recipes gratefully accepted. I'll "toast" you all if I get some :beer: lol.

squeaky

There are LOADS of recipes in our breadmaking thread.

It's indexed too!

You can find it in our "Indexed Collections" under Old Style Recipes in the sticky at the top of the forum listing, or you can follow the clue in my signature any time you see it or...

..you can use the Indexed Collections link in the Blue Bar at the top of every page which looks something like this:-

Bogof_Babe

Oh bless you Squeaky (what's that, you didn't sneeze? lol ). I suspected there would be a bread thread (hey I'm a poet!) somewhere, but thought it might just be for how to do it in a breadmaking machine.

I'll have a browse now, and hope to find some old fashioned recipes involving an oven! Thanks again - and for the quick reply :T .

apprentice_tycoon

Hi Bogof_Babe - I'm not sure if the breadthread has instructions for making in a conventional machine, if not - have the speed fairly vigorous but not so lively that it shakes the machine around, when the dough has actually mixed together knead for around 6 minutes until it's silky, soft and smooth.

squeaky

I have to admit it's mostly breadmakers - but certainly any recipes given will work just fine by hand or in your Kenwood.

I'm pretty sure that some of the links lead to sites about hand making - which is a close approximation when you think about it; you just do the first mix in the machine then bash it about a bit by hand etc

Hmmm... I know I've seen a good site...

Edit: Got it!

http://www.breadinfo.com/index.shtml

Bogof_Babe

Hi A_t - thanks for the tip. Must admit, the main thread does seem to be all about start-to-finish BM machines, so do you by any chance have any guidance on ingredients, quantities, procedure etc. for the manual operation?

I emphasise that I don't want any fancy stuff, just a bog standard white (or wholemeal) loaf. I know it shouldn't be too hard, but even my recipe books are geared towards adding all sorts of extras.

I want to test out the general theory that it is actually cheaper to make than buy the stuff!
A loaf of Hovis is around 80p here nowadays, so anything that comes in under say 50p (to allow for the gas used to cook it) would be brilliant!

squeaky

I've just edited my earlier post just above to link to a good site for you

Bogof_Babe

Aww thanks for your trouble Squeaks. I was posting back to A_t at the same time!

Off for a good investigate now! :A

(Edit - that site is now in my favourites! )