The Consumer’s Guide to Bread Makers
Bread Machines: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread
Once upon a time you needed – or kneaded – a fresh loaf of bread made from scratch every day. A few decades ago saw the advent of supermarkets with working women flocking in droves to purchase ready-made, pre-sliced loaves to store efficiently in their freezers. But there was a price to pay for that efficiency – and many no longer want to pay it.
Nowadays, thousands of people everywhere are reviving the art of baking and enjoying fresh bread every day. Replete with nutrients, enriched with whole grains and seeds, nuts and raisins, healthy nutritious loaves are complimenting the daily menu of diners around the world. Delicate fluffy white loaves, scrumptious Russian pumpernickel, mouth-watering garlic bread, delectable focaccia – the variation is endless. Now you can have all these and more with the flip of a switch! Simply add the ingredients to the pan of your bread maker, place the pan in the machine and close the lid. Select the settings of your choice, push the button, and presto! A while later you have a delicious loaf ready and waiting, warm and oven-fresh.
Bread makers come in a range of sizes. A mini machine will produce a single-pound loaf, while a compact version will give you a 2-lb. loaf or even a choice between 1 or 1 ½ and 2lbs. Most models offer a three-way choice of loaf-size, producing 1, 1 ½, and 2-lb. loaves.
White, silver, grey, and other colors are available in smooth metal or brushed stainless steel housing. Accessory rectangular loaf pans are the norm, but high-ended versions may boast variously sized and shaped pans.
Choice of settings is the main distinguishing characteristic among models. Specialty settings will produce an impressive assortment of fare, ranging from gingerbread and chocolate chip cookie dough to onion buns and precious preserves. Extra features are a big benefit. They are a boon to convenience, cleanliness, and efficiency.
Which bread maker is the one for you? Consider size; your kitchen must accommodate it. Consider capacity; it must provide for all those clamoring fans drifting in the direction of the enticing aroma. Consider settings; do you have particular preferences, or dietary and time constraints? Consider features; these can be a great convenience.
All in all, if you will be happy with some tasty white bread and a flavor or two in addition, you won’t need to invest in an expensive model. Should a diversity of settings be what you’re after, you will pay for the versatility of a high-ended brand; the more settings there are, the more expensive the machine. But then again, you only live once…
Bread Maker Settings Bread makers are distinguished by the variety of settings they feature. Some models offer as many as 18!
Different types of bread are determined by specific settings. Clearly defined functions take the fretting out of setting! White bread, whole wheat bread, raisin bread, gluten-free, low-carbohydrate, artisan dough – multiple settings will afford you versatility. This is indeed the perfect solution for bread lovers with allergies or salt-restricted diets.
Incidentally, Marie Antoinette never said, “Let them eat cake!” What she actually said was that they could eat brioche, a delicate sweet braided bread which is incomparable to any bread you have ever eaten. You, too, can be privy to the art of brioche baking with your new bread maker.
Specialty settings will create French breadsticks, rolls, buns, and croissants. Pizza and focaccia dough can be yours with a pizza setting, and so can pasta dough on models that feature it. How about French bread and - believe it or not - the jam to go with it?! If you wish to prepare cookie dough, you can do that, too, with the appropriate setting. Need to bake a cake? A bake-only function will omit the kneading and rising stages, to produce a delicious cake as easy as pie!
After the machine mixes the ingredients, kneads the dough, and waits for it to rise, it kneads it again and bakes it. A dough setting will interrupt the process so that you can remove the dough prior to rising. If you wonder to what benefit a dough setting is, consider this:
Tomorrow is your best friend’s dinner party and you’ve promised to help. They have the space, you have the bread machine. You will earn your claim to fame by simply using the dough setting; simply bring the dough over for baking in their conventional oven just prior to dinner!
Next week you’re flying to Aspen for your skiing vacation. You know you’ll be tired upon your return. Use the dough setting, remove the dough for freezing; bake it when you come home!
Want to braid or shape the dough in your favorite specially-shaped pan? The dough setting means you can bake it in your regular oven exactly the way you want it.
The crust setting will choose the color. Hopefully yours will come with this and offer you a 3-way choice.
A standard white bread cycle can take up to 3 ½ hours from start to finish. Whole wheat takes longer. With a quick-bake setting, the temperature is increased to speed up the process to as little as 1 hour! Some models even offer 2 of these settings.
If your machine is user-programmable, it will enable you to program it yourself with cycles of your choice. You may also be able to interrupt or prolong the machine’s pre-programmed cycles in accordance with your recipes’ specifications. Note that the time requirement of each step varies according to bread type.
Beyond the Basics: Features ‘N Frills Don’t loaf around with the half-baked idea that maybe someday you’ll treat yourself. Be sure to look for these:
* A delayed-start timer is undeniably king of all features in a bread maker. With it you can delay onset of the bread-making process by up to 15 hours! (It will come to your rescue when your mother-in-law calls up at 7:00 am and asks if she can come for dinner. You get home from work at 6:00, but you know which side your bread is buttered on…)
* A temperature signal is your indication that the room temperature is too cold for adequate rising.
* The twist-lock mechanism makes it easy to remove piping-hot bread, especially if it has risen considerably. Otherwise you must use a handle, which may prove difficult.
* A nonstick removable baking pan will be a cinch to clean.
* The progress indicator does just that – so that you will know the time remaining until your bread is done.
* The viewing window will cue you in visually on the progress.
* A detachable lid is easy to clean.
* Power interruption protection enables your machine to resume activity from the point of interruption, once the power is reinstated. (This mechanism varies from model to model in terms of sustainable power outage duration.)
* A fruit and nut dispenser beeps when you need to add these extras. More sophisticated models dispense them automatically with or without chopping them first. (Of course, you may prefer them whole.)
* A pause feature lets you interrupt the entire process for 15 minutes or so.
* Keep warm will do so for up to 1 hour without letting the bread get soggy!
* A handle increases portability.
* Touch-panel controls are a pleasure to keep clean.
* Accessories are little gifts in the way of measuring cups, spoons, and recipe books.
We’ve come a long way since our grandmothers spent hours making bread day by day. It was a source of pride for them, however, and they did it with excellence and a sense of dedication. Did you know that the word “lady” is actually a mutated form of the Old English word hlafdige, meaning “bread maker” (literally, “loaf dough-kneader”)? And that the word “lord” originates from hlafweard, or “bread keeper” (literally, “loaf warden”)?
We may no longer associate bread with status – though we do retain this sense when we use “bread” to mean money. Yet the next time you break bread after using your brand-new bread maker, you are sure to enjoy it as you never have before…
