Bread Machines

[Egon]

I have a few "Refurbished" tools that have been well used and still work well.

Now I'm looking for a place to send my aging carcass to for rebuilding!

 

[PhilNH5]

Bird,
I have never used a bread machine but I use a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer. I had read a few negative reviews on cooking sites but i have never had any problems - my mixer is two years old.

I leave it out on the counter. If it was hidden away I would use it a lot less. It is very heavy - I would guess close to 20 pounds. Not something I would relish pulling out from a cabinet.
I make a loaf of yeast bread a week. I also make a quick bread each weekend. I use the stand mixer for mashed potatoes as well.

I bought the food mill attachment. I use this to make apple butter in the fall and strawberry jam in the summer. Occassionally I will use the meat grinder to make sausage.
All in all I figured (correctly) that I would get much more use from a stand mixer than a bread machine.

For bread the Artisan has just enough power to knead the dough. I would be worried that a lesser model might not be sufficient for routine use on bread dough. Also the stand mixer only kneads the dough. You still have to transfer to a pan for the second rising and heat up the oven to bake it.

The bowl is narrow also so adding ingredients can be tricky. It came with a plastic pour shield to help with this but I have never used it. I add most of the ingredients before mounting the bowl to the stand mixer.

The Artisan has been a great addition to the kitchen and I would buy it again i a second.

Phil

 

[Bird]

The Artisan has been a great addition to the kitchen and I would buy it again i a second

Thanks, Phil. I just ordered one of the refurbished Artisans. You get a 6 month warranty instead of one year, but I save $119 over buying a new one locally.

 

[MikePA]

The machine would make good bread but the crust was so tough and hard you could not eat it. We tried several recipes and suggestions with no luck. Do any of you have that problem or know what we did wrong? We would like to try another but don't want the hard crust.

I've never had this problem with the Black and Decker machine we have. Our bread comes out looking like the picture Egon posted and we just use the bread mixes from the grocery store.

The B & D has 2 settings for crust (Regular and Dark) as well as Time (Regular and Rapid). I've never used the Dark crust option and the Rapid setting doesn't make as good a loaf.

All I've ever used to cut the bread is an electric knife. I let the loaf cool, place the loaf in a plastic thing that allows me to cut clean slices of bread and sliced away. As long as I didn't press down on the knife (let the knife do the work), everything worked fine.

 

[Bird]

We used to have one of those plastic things to put a loaf of bread in to slice it nice and evenly. I think that's another of those things we got rid of when we went to full time RVing 18 years ago. And I've also used the electric knife for slicing bread, but I have another knife that's pretty handy and quicker. Forty years ago this Spring, I was recruiting and had a booth at a show at Market Hall next to a guy who was demonstrating and selling two knives; not a set, just the two shown in the attachment. After watching him for 3 days driving nails in boards, then sawing the nails in two with these knives, then use the same knives to thinly slice tomatoes and other vegetables, I bought these two knives. The black handled one is a 5.5" serrated blade and the white handled one is an 8" serrated top edge and scalloped lower edge. They've been used and abused for 40 years and I still use them. The scalloped edge of the white handled knife is my bread cuttin' knife. I also bought a pair of them for my parents back then, and at one time, they had a wheel bearing go bad on the Alaska highway, had to order one and wait for the bus to bring it up the next day, and the oil seal was too big. So Dad used that black handled knife for a hacksaw on that oil seal.

 

[MossRoad]

We have two of these bread knives from the Pampered Chef. The thing works great on bread and is under $10.00. Can't beat it. We ended up with a second one as a gift.

 

[KaiB]

Bird, I wouldn't hesatate for a second to buy the re-furbished mixer; not the bread machine. They're heavy, but you'll find a gazillion uses for one. You'll do your final kneading by hand anyway, but you'll find yourself getting better with a bit of time.

Spend four bucks on a dough scraper and you'll wonder how you lived without one.

 

[Bird]

A dough scraper? I don't think I know what that is.

 

[duber34]

Dough scraper.


Regards,
Duber

 

[Bird]

Thanks, Duber. I've seen those; just didn't know what they were called.