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Yes, but the crust made by baking in the bread machine is nothing like the crust he'd get by taking the dough out, making a properly shaped loaf of sourdough, and baking it in the oven.
Breadmachines are great for kneading up the dough and saving money on bread, but not so great for baking it.
Matter of opinion. Some people prefer the way it comes out of the machine better than the oven.
I have a Moulinex xxl bread machine and use it alot. I have made bread the traditional way too but I really like the simplicity of the bread machine. Just put in the ingredients, choose the program and come back when it's over or do it overnight and unmold it for breakfast.
I remove the hooks after the kneading is over so that the bread is easier to unmold. I also keep fresh yeast starter. I like the flavor and consistency it adds.
Look in thrift stores for a good bread machine. I found mine complete with instructions. It looked like it had been used just a few times. I paid $10 and have been using it for over 5 years.
that's a good tip. it's surprisingly easy to find bread machines at garage sales and thrift stores that have only been used a couple times in the $10 range.
other cost concerns are the breadmaker mfgers' insistence that you have to use special bread machine flower and yeast. there are definitely ways around both of those if you're willing to spend some time tweaking - i usually use a sourdough starter culture instead of a packet of 'bought' yeast.
Hello. Just following the wonderful grocery thread, and someone mentioned using a bread machine. Never used one, never thought about it. We eat whole wheat bread that averages about $2.50 per loaf. Is the cost savings using a bread machine worth buying one? I don't even know how much a machine would cost!! Guess I'll look it up now. Always seemed like it would be pretty involved, making the bread that is.
You can generally pick up a bread machine at any thrift shop for about $10. Look for one that has an instruction book included. Otherwise, you are going to have to try to find the instructions on the internet which may or may not be possible.
We use a bread machine when we make our bread. It is a great time saver since making bread can be nearly a whole day event if you do it "the old fashioned" way. With a bread machine you can make a loaf every couple of days and it is always fresh and tastes good. I would suggest that you NOT use a mix, but make it from fresh ingredients (we even grind our own flour).
The drawbacks to doing this are: If the power goes out you are sunk. We used to live in an area where there were frequent power outages so we could not have used our bread machine there. Fortunately, now we have very reliable electrical service. and;
It scares the cats to death. Bread machines make a lot of strange and sudden noises. Our cats are always freaked out (even though we make bread fairly often).
I recommend them highly (bread machines, not cats). We have three of them and use them often. The bread tastes better than store bought and you know that the ingredients are fresh and have no chemical additives. If you don't like making bread this way, you can always take it back to the thrift shop from wence it came.
I never would have though cats and bread machines would not do well with each other!
We are off the electrical grid so we don't have electrical appliances which make heat but we do have a Kitchen Aid mixer so I use that to make bread. We did get a GrainMaker grain hand powered grain grinder last year which is a beauty thing, too, so now we have fresh ground whole wheat bread. Way tastier than pre-ground flour although I'm still not able to get the same amount of rise from the fresh ground flour as the old pre-ground bread flour.
Whether a bread machine is used or it is done by hand, baking one's own bread not only smells and tastes much better than store bought, it can save tons of money, too. We buy yeast in two to three pound bags (anyone know how to grow bread yeasts - other than sourdough?) and we buy wheat berries by the 50# bag as well as occasional 25# bags of pre-ground flour. I'm not sure what the price per loaf comes out to, but it is probably below $1 a loaf.
Hmm. The internet is a wonderous thing! According to a conversion website I found, flour in the United States is approximately 4.5 cups per pound or 225 cups per 50# bag. Five cups per loaf - more or less - is 45 loaves per 50# bag of pre-ground flour. If a 50# bag of flour is $14 at Costco then it would be .31 cents for the flour. A three pound bag of yeast is about $4 so add in about .08 for the yeast. If you use sourdough for a starter, then that expense can be deleted. Not including the utility costs of running the oven, a loaf of homemade basic bread is about thirty nine cents a loaf for the materials to make it.
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