Continued Breadmaker Carnage (attempt 5) .. starts on Post #87

JennyW_2

wishing4amoneytree wrote: »

does anyone knw the cheapest place to buy a breadmaker? want to start making my ownto save money but dont want to have to spend a small fortune buying one either!

what make did you want to buy? I find the cheapest isn't necessarily the best. I bought the Tesco one and for me it was pants. Upgraded to the Panasonic and I'm in love :smileyhea

wishing4amoneytree

YES, I keep hearing good things about the panasonic! I dont mind what make aslong someone can recommend it. I will steer clear of the tesco one then! x

JennyW_2

wishing4amoneytree wrote: »

YES, I keep hearing good things about the panasonic! I dont mind what make aslong someone can recommend it. I will steer clear of the tesco one then! x

I was convinced when someone here posted a link which detailing how the Panasonic machine works, plus the bread pan on the panasonic is so much better quality - the Tesco one is like a tin bucket :rotfl:

read this:
http://panasonic.co.jp/appliance/global/products/bread_bakery/techno_2.html

wishing4amoneytree

thanks for that! looks very scientific! I can find what specific model that is? do you know?

mandy_moo_1

i've got the Morphy Richards Fast Bake, and i wouldn't be without it!! Mind you, after reading all about the Panasonics on here, i wouldn't mind if i woke up one day to find one on my doorstep

millie

I had an Asda one the white bread was acceptable after a lot of fiddling about changing the quatities of the ingredients, but I never had a single success with wholemeal in about 20 attempts and went back to buying the wholemeal. I bought a Panasonic in December and have never bought a wholemeal loaf since. Don't like shop bread anymore even the freshly baked ones.

In_Search_Of_Me

PN any sucess yet?

PasturesNew

In_Search_Of_Me wrote: »

PN any sucess yet?

Not tried again. I can't keep baking bread and eating the whole loaf because it turns out wrong. That's a whole day's food and calories, so if I tried every day I'd end up eating just 7 loaves in a week!

Bought a half loaf tonight, so won't need any more bread now until that's run out. Best before 3rd, so I'll be wanting bread maybe by the 5th or 6th... might leave it until the 8th/9th though (thinking through all the food I've got in and the best before dates).

As I don't have a freezer, and I live alone, no visitors ever, the dates on whatever I buy dictate the order in which I eat things, so I wanted to be guaranteed to have bread over the bank holiday weekend rather than assuming the 3rd loaf would be OK.

Hope that made sense.

PasturesNew

Right ... so. 3rd attempt, with a twist.

Since my 2nd loaf failed I've been looking at the breadmaker, knowing I'd have to do something with it again soon. Got as far as picking up another of the packets and reading it, then put it away again.

Then my friend who bought one (that got me buying one) made a pizza. Damned huge thing it was (seen photo). So for the last two days I've been building up to making a pizza base.

I don't want a pizza as big as he made. For starters it will make two HUGE pizzas. But I've no idea if I can store the ready made dough (or how)... if you know, let me know. And the other thing is how safe it would be to just halve the ingredients and try to create half. I know halving some things just doesn't work.

Well I just went up the shop and they have small packs of mozarella at half price, so I got that. As I was leaving I spotted mixed peppers are on offer (£1 for 3 I think), so might go back and get some of those, although that's adding an unnecessary £1 to the cost and these pizzas might be pants yet!

But I do need to go back to the shop as I didn't have the recipe ingredients list when I was there. Now back and I need to get:

Butter - I wonder if Utterly Butterly will do or if I need proper butter
Sugar - damned nuisance as I never buy that, so will need to buy 2lb of sugar to make a pizza
Salt - I'll give this a miss, I don't put salt in or on food. Unless somebody says it will be horrible without salt.
Strong white bread flour - this surprised me, thought it would have been normal flour
Fast action yeast - hope I don't get the wrong stuff! Never bought this before

So, it's gone pitch black outside now so don't want to go shopping in a downpour. This pizza will be for tea tonight (and supper, lunch tomorrow, tea tomorrow, supper ... and probably I'll still have some left over by Sunday ... and Monday .. if I eat nothing else - unless you can advise that just making half the dough by dividing the ingredients exactly in half is OK)

Gingernutmeg

You do need salt in bread, otherwise it'll be as bland as anything and won't taste brilliant. There is an Italian bread that's made with no salt, but that's made to be eaten with really salty food so it cancels the blandness out, IYSWIM. But, if you're making breakmaker bread you will need salt, as that's what'll give it the flavour. If you were making it by hand and giving it a lot of rises, then you could get away with less salt but as a breadmaker's really just a smaller home-sized version of the factory process you can't really do without salt.

Regarding the butter, if you're making a pizza you can sometimes substitute olive oil for the butter. I always use olive oil in my pizza bases and it's nice.

As for storage, as you haven't got a freezer you can't really store the dough for *that* long. If you put it in the fridge then it'll keep for a day or so, as the cold will slow the yeast down. I wouldn't leave it much longer than that though.

I'm not sure about dividing the quantities. If you were making the bread by hand then I'd say go for it, as you'll be able to compensate for faster/slower rising etc, but I think breadmakers are a bit too 'technological' for that.