I see posts talking about good BIFL items but I don’t hear much about the other side of products that are bad or products you bought but don’t even use.
I see posts talking about good BIFL items but I don’t hear much about the other side of products that are bad or products you bought but don’t even use.
A bread machine. Had good reviews. I used it like 3 or 4 times. The mixing things are too small to mix the dough properly, and having to fish them out of the bread after it was done was a huge hassle. The bread was not great… Shell was too hard, and the top side didn’t cook properly. Then I realized, I could basically do the same with a planetary mixer that can mix the dough and the normal oven, and the end result was far better.
Honestly it’s easier to do small batch of bread by hand than machine, you’ll have to clean a lot more thing afterward with machine mixing. These day there’s autolyse to help cut out the kneading.
Surprised I had to scroll to see bread machine.
I bought a rather expensive machine… used it 3 times, bread is not very good.
Then I went down the homemade sourdough rabbit hole, now I am making artisan loafs with my homemade starter… super enjoyable process and the bread is amazing!
There are good bread machines. I stopped eating bread so I gave one away that made awesome bread, especially French bread.
It was also nice for make pizza dough. Stopped eating that too.
I use bread machines for mixing the dough and resting and stuff and then bake in the oven on a pan. Am I crazy for that?
I just use a planetary mixer that can mix the dough. It uses a lot less space, and it can be used for multiple purposes. For resting, rising, i will just transfer it over to the pan and put it somewhere warm, like next to the radiator or in the oven on a very low setting.
Same here, I did make some amount of bread as a sort of novelty, but after a month most of my use came down to having it make my pizza dough for me. Did that for years.
That’s a shame. When I wasn’t sure whether we’d actually make use of a bread machine, I picked up an entry level one for like $100 (Canadian).
Since then, we’ve made probably 100+ loaves, saving money and reducing both food waste and plastic. It’s been one of our best kitchen purchases.
I’d suggest trying a different recipe. It can make a huge difference to the end result.
I bought ours at goodwill for $10 and it works great. Only problem is that it only makes a 1lb loaf, and that gets eaten really fast.