| Product: |
Kenwood Breadmaker BM200 |
| Date: |
26/09/04 (2069 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Cheap, Quick Cycle
Disadvantages: No Fruit & Nut Dispenser
It was my birthday recently and we have recently moved into a new house, put these two factors together and you get a simple equation…Birthday Present = house gadget! Now I don’t mind that I am getting a bread maker as a birthday pressie, I want one, and what better way to make sure I remember to take my sandwiches to work in the morning than to make them with lovely fresh bread? The thing is you see, my sister has one, my boyfriends mum has one and makes the best stollen I have ever tasted. My parents however have been Atkins Diet compromised and whilst living with them I had to defrost slice by slice as and when I needed from a loaf of Warburtons. As a result I now crave bread all the time. Could there be a better way to satisfy that craving than to buy a bread maker and eat fresh bread whenever I want, I think not!
So, off to the electrical retailers we go, I had done some research and decided that I quite like the look and sound of the Kenwood BM200. In Curry’s it was reduced to £49.99 from £79.99 (I guess they’re just always cutting prices), and was the same price at Argos. We decided to go to Curry’s to make our purchase as we didn’t want to queue for a ridiculous amount of time at Argos. We found the one we wanted, made a man go and get one for us “from out back” and wandered to the till. By this point I had already flicked through a few of the recipe books that come with other machines and thought the BM 200’s was quite well laid out and the actual recipe’s looked quite tasty. Of course I had gazed lustfully at the one that practically weighs the ingredients for you but knew that the Kenwood offered much more value for money than anything else displayed.
So we bought it, went to Sainsbury’s and bought ingredients and went home. When I unwrapped the box I was greeted with a quite complex puzzle, how do I possibly get the thing out of the box (little rant coming now, if you don’t want to read skip to next paragraph). If you are on your own it would be a nightmare to access your bread maker. It is wedged in with big chunky bits of polystyrene which are shaped so that you can’t get hold of them. Just thinking about it can get my blood pressure rising! Thank goodness I had someone with me to grab the box and pull it away from the breadmaker, allowing me to then get excited about the prospect of actually making some bread.
We had already read the instructions and swiftly took the bits out of the inside (baking pan, kneader, measuring jug and teaspoon) and washed them as per instructions in warm soapy water, I think this gets the nasty chemicals off. The kneader was placed in the pan and we were ready.
The first recipe we tried is the ‘Quick Start’ recipe on the inside front cover of the instruction book. This book is made for people like me who find it very difficult to contain their enthusiasm for new gadgets and have to use them straight away. It tells you that you should read the instructions carefully but adds that you can always turn to the quick start page if you can’t be bothered. That’s what I like, an honest instruction book, people who know that when you buy something new, you don’t want to spend ages reading the manual, you want to use it!
Anyway, we carefully weighed out the ingredients and added them in the correct order (in the recipe they are listed in the correct order so that makes it easier), after nigh on 3 hours the bleeper went and we found ourselves the owners of a brand spanking new loaf of bread, which I made, woo hoo. It tasted divine, (my recommendation with real butter and honey) and didn’t last more than 24 hrs.
For those of you who think that a 3 hour wait would drive you mad with anticipation, there is a rapid bake cycle which bakes a loaf in an hour (it doesn’t rise as much though). You can make all sorts of different loaves with this machine and categories of baking include sweet breads (gingerbread etc), wholemeal breads and a dough cycle (for things like pizza bases and rolls).
When the bread had been baked, it is recommended that you take the pan out of the machine and turn out the bread. We did this but I would offer a word of warning, it is hot. Very hot. All parts of it. You will burn yourself if you don’t use an oven glove. Yes even the little handle that lifts the pan out of the machine gets hot. Be warned.
After applying cold water to a burnt appendage for approximately 10 minutes we were free to look at our masterpiece. A cooling rack was found and the pan turned upside down. Now on other loaves that I have seen that came from a bread machine, I have found there to be a rather large hole at the bottom where the kneader fits in, Not so with the Kenwood BM200. The kneader slides out of the bread leaving a small slit, not a crater the size of Venus like other machines. In all the bread had risen well, it was crusty enough on the outside, yet light and fluffy on the inside, it sliced well (although I think that’s a measure of slicing talent rather than bread making ability) and tasted delicious.
So that’s my experience of this bread maker, I like it, I like it a lot. Value for money is excellent and it has all these little functions that you don’t expect, such as the ability to make jam.
The timer function allows you 12 hours before your loaf is ready, so fresh bread in the morning is a possibility and the smell is such that you would wake up salivating at the prospect of your breakfast. The machine is also quite quiet, when you start the cycle it pulses for about 6 minutes as an initial knead, it then goes into the second knead which is a constant whirring as the bread is now being thoroughly kneaded. After the second kneading there is a beeping noise which is the time when you add your other ingredients for flavoured breads.
We have our machine in the kitchen and have the doors open into our lounge, we can quite happily sit watching the telly with the bread maker on and not be disturbed. We do however keep getting up to have a look at what it looks like, or how much it has risen. I figure that the energy I expend walking to and from the kitchen makes up for the calories that I ingest when the bread is cooked. It sits nicely on my worktop and doesn’t look overly big, or make my kitchen (granted not the biggest in the world) look cluttered. It measures in at around 1.5 - 2 feet wide by about 1 foot front to back.
My overall opinion of the Kenwood BM200 is very good, everything I have cooked in it has turned out nicely (it may be foolproof), and at the current reduced prices offered in the shops for this particular model I couldn’t suggest a better model in terms of value for money. I am very happy with my bread maker and hope that we will have a long and happy life together. It loses a star however as it doesn’t have a dispenser thingy, so I can’t make fruit breads for breakfast.
A definite recommendation from me!
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