Flour power isn't for me (Morphy Richards 48221 Breadmaker)

Member Name: rdobbie

Product:	Morphy Richards 48221 Breadmaker
Date:	16/05/02 (2227 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great for making dough, Good if you've got time and patience, Better than more expensive models

Disadvantages: Difficult to achieve correct recipe, Paddle leaves hole in loaf, No cheaper than buying bread

My adoration of the smell of freshly baked bread has always verged on fetish. I love the blissful aroma of a batch of crusty white loaves as they are put on the shelves of the Tesco in-store bakery, still slightly warm inside their plastic bags. The taste of fluffy white bread with butter and strawberry jam. Heaven really is a place on earth.

So when breadmakers became the latest "must have" kitchen gadget, I found the allure of having my own miniature bakery to be irresistible.

Every sensible part of my brain knew that this large white box had a distinct whiff of "white elephant" about it, and would soon be fighting with the waffle maker, Goblin Teasmade and Soda Stream to achieve that coveted spot in the back of the kitchen cupboard which would become its home until 2015 until it took centre stage at a car boot sale. (Oh how we thought Soda Streams would open the door to a brave new world of carbonated drinks back in the eighties).

But another part of me could not fight the urge to own a machine which would actually make a loaf of bread. I still can't quite remember why I felt it so difficult to actually buy a fresh loaf when I needed one - but there we go.

I've always been pretty useless in the kitchen and I wouldn't have a clue about making dough. Even if I did, it sounds like too much like hard work. Which is why the breadmaker's simplicity held such an appeal for me.

I must admit that the tumbling price of bread makers was another catalyst in my decision making process. When they first became widely available, in around 1997, they were still above the £100 barrier. But as their popularity soared, the wonders of mass-production in the Far East managed to squeeze the cheapest models to below £40 towards the end of last year.

When I saw Argos's Cookworks breadmaker on special offer for £34.99, I knew that I could wait no longer. Like a good boy I checked the Which report
s to see that I wasn't getting a duff model. To my amazement, the Cookworks machine (which is Argos's own brand, I should add), was the Best Buy - beating off stiff competition from deluxe models which cost up to three times as much.

When I gave my order slip to the woman at Argos, she said that the Cookworks model shown in the catalogue had been substituted for a Morphy Richards Essentials model which was identical in all but name. Apparently, they came from the same factory and had a different name printed on them. Would I be happy to accept the Morphy Richards model instead? Of course. So I bundled my breadmaker into the boot of my car, and dashed home, foaming at the mouth with the excitement of what culinary delights lay ahead.

So here goes with my experiences of the Morphy Richards Essentials Breadmaker.

Before buying my breadmaker I had been under the misapprehension that I just needed to throw in some cheap flour (the 11p a bag economy stuff - such was my naivety), together with water and yeast, and out would pop a mouthwatering crusty loaf which had cost me tuppence to make.

This was my first mistake. I had been unaware of the cost of ingredients you need for these breadmakers. For a start, the Tesco Value flour is a big no-no - you actually need to buy strong bread flour, which is classed as a specialist flour and costs between 79p and 99p a bag. (I never since fathomed why normal flours take up so much shelf space in Tesco if they're no good for making bread).

Then you need yeast, which isn't cheap either, it cost me 99p for a small tin. And skimmed milk powder which, again, is surprisingly expensive. You also need small quantities of salt, sugar and vegetable oil which have a nominal cost. Before I'd even plugged the darn thing in, it had dawned on me that there was hardly any financial saving to be made by homebaking, especially when you consider the three hours of electricity. Compare thi
s with the expertly-made crusty farmhouse loaf on sale for 49p in Tesco, and things are already looking a bit grim.

The recipe book is vital to your breadmaker, and it stresses the importance of measuring your ingredients to the utmost precision to achieve a perfect loaf. Which is exactly what I did. They supply you with some accurate measuring cups. You literally bung the ingredients into the metal tin, although you shouldn't let the water touch the yeast until you press start, as this will throw the finely-tuned process all out of goose.

For the first hour or so, you hear muted whirring noises as the machine takes care of the kneading process. Through the perspex window you can see your ingredients turning into a rather impressive lump of dough. There is a little rotating paddle at the bottom of the tin, rather like the blade on a hand blender, which does all the hard work so you don't have to. And then you just wait while the machine does the baking.

The smell of baking bread which pumped through my house gave me a false sense of hope, as the final result was bitterly disappointing.

The bread was square and had not risen into the "domed" top that you expect. There was a gaping hole in the underside of the loaf, caused by the detachable paddle coming loose and rising up with the dough. The presence of this large hole means that slices 8 to 12 look like an arch shape. The problem with the loose paddle seems to be an inherent design fault in many breadmakers. There is no way of preventing it from coming loose half way through the cycle. Your loaf is still edible but aesthetically it is ruined.

The bread itself was nothing like the fresh bread you would buy in a shop. Although it was fully baked, and the crust was good, the inside was slightly off-white and a little stodgy in texture, rather like a sponge cake. Very hard to describe, but it just wasn't "right".

Worried that I had mi
sread part of the recipe, I tried many times over the following days and weeks to make a decent loaf. I followed all the troubleshooting advice in the manual, but eventually I decided the breadmaker would never produce the results I had expected. I tried using wholemeal flour, which was even more expensive than white, but again I found the texture to be very rich and cake-like. The bread was suitable for making toast, but it was not the sort of bread you would use for sandwiches as it left you feeling bloated after eating just one slice.

Maybe I'm just too fussy about my bread, and some people might like the end product of this breadmaker, but I can honestly say that it is an acquired taste and is nothing like you would buy in a shop.

The booklet contains dozens of recipes for speciality breads and cake mixtures. I daresay that if you had the time and energy to try all these recipes, and tweak them all to your own preference, that you would find the machine was capable of producing good results. As a dough making device, the machine is superb as it cuts out all the hard work (even Delia Smith admits that). But I feel that using the machine for making dough alone, and then finishing the job in your oven, rather undermines the breadmaker's selling point as an "all in one" labour-saving device for a modern lifestyle.

Somebody commented on this breadmaker: "In the event of civil unrest or war we would have a couple of weeks supply of bread, depending on our flour stocks." Of course the same can be achieved by keeping a couple of loaves in the freezer, although I doubt that any of these measures would save you in the event of modern biological warfare.

I know that many people have given this breadmaker a good review, but remember that these people have had to experiment with the recipe and spend a lot of time mastering the whole process. But frankly I have got a busy lifestyle and I wanted the breadmaker to
save time, not cost time.

If you've got plenty of patience, and are prepared to waste lots of ingredients in the name of trial and error, then you might find the perfect formula for a good loaf, and this machine might be right for you. And if you already have good baking skills you may find the machine useful purely as a dough maker.

Sadly there is no escaping the unsightly "axe wound" left in every loaf by the paddle. I feel that this is an issue the designers should address as they develop new models. Maybe the paddle could somehow retract into the base after the kneading process has finished. The recipe booklet also needs to be changed as it is too scientific and wrongly implies that you should not adjust the recipes in your quest for success.

People with Soda Streams eventually found out that it was easier to go out and buy a 2 litre bottle of fizzy drink. Regrettably, the same principle applies to this breadmaker, and I can now regularly be found in Tesco's bread section choosing a ready-made loaf at a very reasonable price, while my breadmaker takes up much-needed cupboard space.

It would be unrealistic to say that you can take this machine home, chuck the ingredients in, and enjoy a perfect loaf, because it's not as plain sailing as that.

For 35 quid I'm not complaining, but I think that this product will only have enduring appeal to those who already have a passion and natural affinity towards cooking.

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