Okay, there are a couple of caveats to this post, but bear with me. Several people have asked me bread questions lately, so I decided now was as good a time as any to talk about my absolute favorite kitchen appliance (short of, you know, the dishwasher).
Caveat number one: this is not my photograph (I just had to get that fact out of the way). My machine is exactly like this one, but much more . . . used. I took a picture of it, and I thought I had transferred said picture to my computer, but I’m sitting at Starbucks as I write this, and the picture is nowhere to be found. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and SOMEONE saw fit to switch me from a PC to a Mac. I’m having some, um, technological issues. So this is a picture of someone else’s bread machine, courtesy of flickr (don’t ask how long it took me to figure out how to get this picture to show up):
Caveat number two: I fully realize that a lot of people really dislike highly specific, single-purpose kinds of appliances. I don’t care. I couldn’t live without my bread machine.
I make all of our bread. Yes, that includes sandwich bread, dinner rolls, pizza crust, cinnamon buns, pita, baguettes–you name it (and I am not afraid of carbs!). My little machine helps me crank out a lot of bread. And in case you’re wondering about those strange machine-shaped loaves with the cottony texture that you’ve read about, here’s an important fact: I HAVE NEVER BAKED A SINGLE LOAF OF BREAD IN THAT MACHINE. I use it purely as a kneading tool/rising box.
This particular zojirushi model is my second machine. Lee and I got one as a wedding gift from an old family friend, years ago. He worked for a food-industry magazine, and was able to get his hands on an early model (this was 1990)–thus began my homemade bread odyssey. That machine finally gave up the ghost four or five years ago, and I upgraded to this (much sleeker) model. I’ve stayed on top of the research over the years, so I’m confident that this is the best machine out there, if you’re thinking of buying one–it’s called the Home Bakery Supreme.
A loaf of sandwich bread takes me about five minutes to get going, from pulling out the recipe to pressing the start button. A couple of hours later, I spend another five minutes taking the dough out of the machine and putting it into the loaf pan. An hour or so later, I pop it into the oven, and in roughly thirty minutes, I have a loaf of bread that beats Arnold’s all to pieces, with a total of about 15 minutes of hands-on time.
Admittedly, this is not a wedge-it-in-between-work-and-dinner activity, but it’s easy enough that you can make a whole week’s worth of bread on the weekend (and I often find myself making an emergency loaf in the evening, destined for tomorrow’s sandwiches or toast).
I realize that not everyone cares enough about bread to make homemade, but if you do love bread, you should know that the machine makes homemade a perfectly viable option, and yes, the bread is just as good as hand-kneaded. Even the folks at King Arthur Flour, who know everything there is to know about bread, agree.