To BM or not to BM?

foreverskint

Don't know where that leaves me then. Sitting down having dinner tonight I could smell burning. We looked at each other , Me being a muppet had put a tea towel on the hob, which I'd left switched on. Cue one very burnt teatowel.:o
Best I am left in a padded room, and not allowed near any appliances me thinks.

Ticklemouse

There ya go then - tea-towels are more dangerous than washing machines

jaybee

foreverskint - I prefer the 'friendly jackets'!!!

I love my (fairly new) breadmaker. I have made bread by hand but now have severe RSI in thumbs and wrists (not due to bread making!!) so the machine works well for me. . . and I love the smell when I come home from work! Not only that, it's soooo much better than the boiled cotton wool bread that the supermarkets sell.

culpepper

I used to make 4 loaves a week by hand and freeze 3 for later.
Occassionally the yeast would be too old and it meant I'd made 4 door stops(which still got eaten) however it was quite time consuming.
I bought my food processor to make the kneading easier,only to discover I couldnt knead a whole loaf's worth in one go as it was too heavy.So it would take 6 loads in the processor for the 4 loaves.
I now have a BM which can bake a whole large loaf over night and my trusty food processor no longer has to cope with the wear and tear.
If Im making pizza dough however,I still use the processor as I can make the base and bake the pizza in about 1 hour while the BM takes that long just to make the dough.

cath-w

I bake all my own bread and pizza dough by hand. I have used a bread machine before and didn't like them. All down to personal preference though.

The only thing I disagree with is when people say it is cheaper to cook a loaf in a bread maker than an oven. As I batch bake and make 6-8 loaves at a time it is much more cost effective than a bread maker. A typical breadmaker uses 0.6 kilowatts an hour. Usually it takes 2 hours to make a loaf and so this is 1.2 killowatts. If your electricity costs 8 pence a kilowatt than you have to add the cost of approx. 10 pence to the cost of each loaf made in the breadmaker. All figures are approx. It is difficult to workout the wattage of an oven, but it is unlikely that the cost of baking loaf in batches will cost as much as the breadmaker.

...and yes it is sad that I know the wattage, but we are looking at solar panels and so we have had to calculate everything.

Petal_3

OMG! I've just this minute ordered my Panasonic 253...yaaaay! Now.....how to use it???

Swan_2

cath-w wrote:

I bake all my own bread and pizza dough by hand. I have used a bread machine before and didn't like them. All down to personal preference though.

The only thing I disagree with is when people say it is cheaper to cook a loaf in a bread maker than an oven. As I batch bake and make 6-8 loaves at a time it is much more cost effective than a bread maker. A typical breadmaker uses 0.6 kilowatts an hour. Usually it takes 2 hours to make a loaf and so this is 1.2 killowatts. If your electricity costs 8 pence a kilowatt than you have to add the cost of approx. 10 pence to the cost of each loaf made in the breadmaker. All figures are approx. It is difficult to workout the wattage of an oven, but it is unlikely that the cost of baking loaf in batches will cost as much as the breadmaker.

...and yes it is sad that I know the wattage, but we are looking at solar panels and so we have had to calculate everything.

now that's interesting, I used to bake 6 loaves at a time but never costed it because I was using a Rayburn at the time & it was on anyway for heating & hot water. I've recently moved & will be using a gas cooker & have been wondering about the economics of hand-made vs BM, so that's food for thought

foreverskint

re ovens versus Breadmakers:

even taking the cost of the electricity into account I'm still saving 70p per loaf over bought stuff from the bakers:D .