By far, my favourite-ever kitchen gadget. Now YOU need one. Here are my top five reasons why:
1. They save you big $$$...
Bread-makers require a minimal investment (about $80 and up, in Canada, if you think of the long-rewards (or they come FREE if you're smart and ask for one for your birthday... That's if you have awesome friends like I do.. who would be equally awesome without the great gifts).
The price of making bread, cinnamon rolls, pizza dough, and all of the other great things you can make in a bread-maker will literally cost you a small fraction of the cost of buying it. I don't know about you, but I end up spending about $3-4 on a loaf of bread at the grocery store. A basic loaf in the machine will cost you between 50 cents to a dollar.
2. Nothin' like it!
There is nothing like the smell, taste or texture of freshly baked bread. It's just better. 'Nuff said.
3. You'll look like you have mad bread-making skills.
This is a loaf I made for to bring to my grandmother's house. Not that I think this is the best pic ever (actually it was the only one that I had), but it just goes to show that with minimal effort, you can have a really nice looking, but more importantly amazingly tasty product for very little effort. In this case, set it on the dough cycle, braided it, let it rise, and then baked it in the oven with some egg wash. Le voila! Fresh Challah bread.
Try bringing a couple of loaves of bread to a potluck, along with maybe a few cheeses and some pâté, and just see if you don't have a whole crowd of people crowded around your section of the table and chowing down. And then give yourself a pat on the back for all 10 minutes you spend making it.
4. A little comparison... I'll let you decide.
Ingredients in Pom Ultrasoft Superclub Sandwich Bread
Enriched wheat flour, water, glucose-fructose/ sugar, vegetable oil (canola or soybean), yeast, salt, soybean flour, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, mono and diglycerides, acetylated tartaric acid esters of mono and diglycerides, calcium propionate, ammonium chloride, calcium iodate.
Ingredients in my favourite white bread recipe:
Flour, water, salt, yeast
Um... so yeah... there's something to be said for real food. I know what I'd rather feed my family.
5. Mmmm.... Pizza
Pizza dough in the stores have a disgusting mark up. Almost everyone loves pizza, and it can be much cheaper to make at home. With a bread-maker, dough is maybe 50 cents. It can be frozen, and used for pizza, calzones, panzerottis, you name it. Not to mentioned it is ridiculous barbequed and made into sandwiches.. more to come on that in the recipe section for sure.
Scroll to the bottom of this dessert calzone recipe I posted for my current pizza dough recipe.
My Bread-Maker
I have a Sunbeam, and I really have no complaints on it. It has tonnes of features and settings, like a time delay so you can set it in the morning and come home to freshly baked bread, settings for darkness, types of bread, and even an Expressbake feature. Needless to say, I am a fan...
But, if you don't believe me, you can check out what the pros think.
PEOPLE ~ BUY A BREAD-MAKER!
