Smells so good . . (Morphy Richards 48221 Breadmaker)

Member Name: Gromit

Product:	Morphy Richards 48221 Breadmaker
Date:	26/02/01 (1155 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great bread, easy recipes

Disadvantages: None

Smell is very important. It really is. And some smells are completely irresistible. Two of my favourite smells are coffee freshly brewing and, the subject of this opinion, home baking! And particularly the smell of freshly baked bread.

Many years ago, I used to work in a bread making factory. It was part time work and they were always after people to help out during busy periods like Christmas or covering for holidays in the summer. The factory used to bake bread for the local Marks and Spencer and many other shops. It was shift work and the hours were long but I never tired of smelling the freshly baked bread coming out of the ovens. It was great for meal times because you could have a bowl of soup and a VERY freshly baked bread roll – quite literally hot from the oven.

For a number of years, my wife and I have wanted to get a bread maker. For Christmas 1999 we were given a bread maker and so we had our chance to have a go at baking bread. And it was just great. Every bit as good as I had imagined. Sadly, the machine developed a fault and the shop it was bought from (Curry’s) were unable to fix it (no surprise there) and it couldn’t be replaced because it was an end-of-line. In fairness to Curry’s, they offered us our money back or we could put it towards an alternative. Nothing took our fancy so we took the money.

It was no good though, for the few short weeks of it’s working life we had been tempted by the dark side and knew we would have to replace it soon. Soon actually turned out to be quite a few months but we have now got around to replacing it and we have bought the Morphy Richards Breadmaker 48220.

For those that have not taken too much notice of bread makers, they are not very big. Our current machines has the following dimensions:

Height: 33 cm
Width: 27 cm
Depth: 21 cm

This model is capable of baking a regular (1 lb) or large (1.5 lb) loaf of bread.

It
has 11 settings that cover basic breads and speciality breads. The possible settings are:

# Basic White: for breads that primarily use white flour.
1) Regular loaf – time required 2 hours 45 minutes
2) Large loaf - time required 2 hours 50 minutes
3) Large Dark - time required 3 hours 10 minutes (for a darker crust)

# Whole Wheat: these require much longer cooking times because there is an extra period to soak the ingredients.
4) Regular - time required 4 hours 20 minutes
5) Large - time required 4 hours 30 minutes
6) Large Rapid - time required 3 hours 20 minutes

# Speciality
7) French bread - time required 3 hours 30 minutes
8) Sweet - time required 3 hours 25 minutes (used for recipes with sweet ingredients)
9) Dough - time required 1 hour 30 minutes (you can use this for pizza dough etc.)
10) Cake - time required 1 hour 50 minutes
11) Jam - time required 1 hour

The control panel is on the top of the machine and is well laid out. It has a display window that shows your selection. Next to the window is the timer function. This allows you to delay the start of the baking process. You can use this to have the bread freshly baked and ready for when you get up in the morning – highly recommended. The 11 baking options are listed and there is a button for you to select the one you want. The only other controls are a start and stop button. All very simple really.

To bake the bread all of the ingredients are placed in a baking pan which sits in the bread maker. Apart from some of the special breads all of the ingredients are placed in the pan at the start. Yes, it really is that easy. However, you should note that the order they are placed in the pan is important. The instructions do stress this point. You should also measure the amounts quite accurately. Apart from those minor requirements, it’s pretty simple.

If you want to bake a speciality bread ̵
1; one of our favourites is sun dried tomato bread – you have a choice. You can opt to put the extra pieces in when they are required and the machine will beep for you to do this. Or you can put all the ingredients in at the start and just leave them. The slight disadvantage of doing it this way is that the pieces may get a bit more chewed up during the baking process.

Apart from “ordinary” bread, there are quite a few interesting breads you can make. I’ve already mentioned one of my favourites but some of the others you can make are Italian herb bread, pesto bread, cheese and onion bread, olive bread, peanut butter bread, mixed fruit bread, and many others. You can also do cakes like banana nut cake and apple and walnut cake. Or if you fancy a deep pan pizza you can make the dough!

The machine is very easy to use and there is only one safety feature that you must beware of. You must not block the vents because steam has to escape. There are several little vents on the machine, one on the top and some at the side.

One of the nice features is a little “window” at the top. If you take a torch and shine it through the window you can see what’s going on. I mention this because my daughter likes this feature. Children are often fascinated by baking.

You get a comprehensive set of instructions with recipes for the breads I’ve mentioned. They really do work. The ingredients are fairly standard (flour, yeast, etc.) and can be bought at most supermarkets.

There is a two years manufacturer’s warranty with the machine. We bought this machine from Curry’s and they tried to sell us an extended warranty for the second year. So watch out for things like that.

Baking bread is great fun (doing it this way it is also easy) and the bread tastes really good. If you are interested in trying it out then this machine seems to do the job just fine. We have only had this mach
ine for a month and so far we have had no problems. Just nice bread!

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