Home made bread, mmmm (Panasonic SD-253YYDC Breadmaker)

Member Name: sheri3004

Product:	Panasonic SD-253YYDC Breadmaker
Date:	19/10/05 (1735 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent, almost foolproof breadmaker!

Disadvantages: Hole in the bottom of your bread. Very bad for anyone on the Atkins diet!

I received this as a present several months ago, and am I glad I did! Shop bought bread is now a thing of the past in our house.

Having never owned a breadmaker before, I can't really compare it to others on the market, but the SD-253 certainly provides everything I can imagine wanting in a breadmaker. It's spectacularly easy to use - weigh out your ingredients using the measuring cup and scoop provided, select your programme, and off you go. The machine does all the hard work for you - all that tedious kneading, leaving to rise, kneading again, etc) with delicious results every time.

The breadmaker features a wide range of possible programmes - you can select type of bread (basic, wholemeal, French, Italian, sandwich, pizza, bake only or gluten free), size of loaf and colour of crust. You can also use it to make dough (I can highly recommend the white bread rolls, much loved by my son in particular) which you can then shape and bake in your conventional oven. The nut/raisin dispenser is a handy gadget into which you can put your nuts, raisins, sun-dried tomatoes or whatever takes your fancy, and the machine will automatically add them to the dough at the appropriate time in the process.

As it's not too large, the breadmaker fits nicely onto the average work surface. (I'd recommend finding an accessible spot, as if you have to haul it out of the cupboard every time, you're far less likely to use it regularly, which frankly would be a shame.)

It does take time, of course - you can't make a good loaf too quickly. A standard white loaf takes 4 hours - others can be longer. So you do need to plan ahead - it's no use rushing home from work expecting to shove in the ingredients and have bread ready in time for your evening meal, unless you're in the habit of eating very late indeed. There is, however, a timer option which allows you to set the breadmaker to come on at a specified time, and if you can get to grips with that (I haven't, but then I haven't really tried as yet) then freshly baked bread in the morning or evening should be no problem.

The manual is excellent and contains a large number of recipes, many of which I have tried with notable success. Ciabatta goes down particularly well with my family and also seems to keep better than some other breads. The only one which didn't work for me was the pizza dough, which for some reason turns out far too wet. However, I now use a different recipe for the pizza dough programme and it works just fine. (At only 45 minutes, the pizza dough programme is one which you don't have to plan too far ahead to be able to use.)

If you're considering buying a breadmaker, I can highly recommend this model. And if you're not, please do reconsider - once you've got used to home baked bread, you'll never want to buy the pre-packaged supermarket stuff again.

As I got it as a gift, I don't know how much it cost - but Amazon (yes, they sell breadmakers as well as books) have it for £76.97 with free delivery! So it requires a bit of initial outlay, but is definitely a good investment (as long as you use it regularly and don't leave it to gather dust in a cupboard!).

Summary: Excellent easy to use machine with a range of programmes to suit all tastes.

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