Everyone loves bread! Therefore, everyone should have a bread machine. No matter what your price range is, there is a bread machine out there just waiting for you.
They made their debut to the residential consumer back in the 1980s. Considering their fairly heft price tags of $300 – $400, they still were a big hit. New companies were started just to mass produce these, and they became overnight sensations. Well known kitchenware manufacturers still hadn’t caught on as yet.
It took about ten years for the big name kitchen retailers to produce their own bread machines, but when they finally brought these newer models to market, prices had dropped to under $100 and they were lighter, tinier, and quieter. Even with these price reductions, options and styles increased.
Since any baker will tell you, you need a round pan to mix ingredients, so the first bread machines all produced round loaves of bread. The loaves may have looked strange, but they still tasted like regular homemade bread – fabulous. So who could complain? It would be another few years before manufacturers figured out how to make a bread machine with a square baking tin that could also produce some reliable bread.
Today we can find models with round, rectangular or square baking pans inside. Since many bread machine owners have used these things since their invention, they prefer the round tins simply because they do indeed produce a more consistent quality loaf of bread, no matter what. No matter how many technological advances are put into place, manufacturers have not been able to perfect the outcome of the square loaf pans. Loaves still occasionally come out with some crispy edges or unmixed dough.
Bread machines don’t just make bread, either! Most of them have settings for pizza dough, bagel dough, and various stop and start manually controlled switches that allow you to mix the dough but remove it at various times to add ingredients or split the dough into smaller sections.
If you have ever tried to make your own home made bread, you’ll see right away how much time and effort these machines save while still producing equal or better bread. They are set up to standardize mixing times, raising times, and kneading times. If you have ten minutes to add the ingredients, and if you know how to push a button, you already know how to use a bread machine.
Before making a decision on which one to bring home, look at it to see how easy it is to keep clean. When mixing begins, flour tends to get all over the place as does any liquid ingredients. Check out the machinery to see which parts are removable and washable. Also check to see if the heating coils are protected at all – these are fragile and difficult to clean at all costs.
Look for a machine that allows you to completely remove the top and put it in the dish washer. Also look for a machine that has built in splatter guards so that when accidents happen – and they will – you only need to clean the guards.
John McKain has written a few cooking blogs and one of these is a bread machine review blog. If you want to find the best bread maker for your home, his bread machine website is a helpful place for information.
