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Bread; makers, people or mechanical?

S

SamQ aka Ah! Q!

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Good morning and Happy Weekend everyone. For pressing medical reasons (and increasing paranoia re a Reeves Raid on my pension), I am considering home baked sourdough (lots of WH2 refs). But, here's my conundrum: I have two food processors and a stonking big powerful mixer.

Do I NEED a bread maker with an internal paddle (and Popeye hiding below the cover) or, is there a less sophisticated one where I just tip the prepared/proved dough into it and set it running?

Panasonic ("We are not worthy!!") machines seem to start at £200 and up...😳...if I can 'do just as well for less', I'm in.

What does the panel(paneli?) think?
 
Baking by hand is so simple, and a bit of fun. Any mixer with a dough hook for four or five minutes and a little bit of kneading or folding. Or 10 minutes of manual kneading. The trick is always fresh ingredients and experimenting with rising and proving times.
 
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If you've got a powerful enough stand mixer, I've never seen the point in another machine. Put the ingredients in the bowl, run the mixer for 5-10 minutes depending on recipe, turn it off, leave the dough in the mixer bowl to prove, transfer to tins or baking sheet and shape up in the process, then in the oven after its second prove. The total actual effort isn't more than ten minutes, provided you don't leave the house in between.

If you happen to have a heavy cast iron casserole around, that also removes any need to add steam into the oven - preheat the casserole dish with the oven, drop the dough in while it's hot, then do the first half of the bake with the lid on and the second half lid off. If you don't have one around, then just put a dish with some boiling water in on the shelf below the bread when it goes in.
 
Bread machine will cost less to run if that is of significance and i see no reason why you could not decant dough mixed in your mixer into one.
If you intend to make several loaves in a batch then the oven wins on running costs

We have had a Panasonic for years used weekly and still runs perfectly. 5 mins prep time and under 2hrs to completion.
 
Have you seen this thread of mine, Sam ?

www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk

Home-baking gluten free loaf

I have no experience of baking bread but would like to have a go at making some gluten-free bread for my wife. Preferably brown with grains in. This is so she isn't reliant on xanthan-gum soaked, gut-cramping offerings from supermarkets. So...... ... any suggestions, sourcing ingredients...
www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk
 
I’d love to bake my own bread but feel it that is my responsibility to keep the local boulanger in business. :)
 
SamQ aka Ah! Q! said:
..... I am considering home baked sourdough ..... and a stonking big powerful mixer.

Do I NEED a bread maker ...?
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No, absolutely not. I've made all our bread for 10 or 15 years, and Kenwood Chef is the only luxury involved. The process is very quick and simple with a mixer. I'm not sure why sourdough is the flavour of the month. Brewer's yeast has been used for centuries. The health benefits or otherwise of bread lie in the flour, not the raising agent.
 
RogerS said:
Have you seen this thread of mine, Sam ?

www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk

Home-baking gluten free loaf

I have no experience of baking bread but would like to have a go at making some gluten-free bread for my wife. Preferably brown with grains in. This is so she isn't reliant on xanthan-gum soaked, gut-cramping offerings from supermarkets. So...... ... any suggestions, sourcing ingredients...
www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk www.thewoodhaven2.co.uk
Click to expand...
Not yet Roger;I wasn't overly interested in bread making until I got an ultimatum from a chaming young G.P. on Thursday. It's part of a bigger picture.
 
Mike G said:
No, absolutely not. I've made all our bread for 10 or 15 years, and Kenwood Chef is the only luxury involved. The process is very quick and simple with a mixer. I'm not sure why sourdough is the flavour of the month. Brewer's yeast has been used for centuries. The health benefits or otherwise of bread lie in the flour, not the raising agent.
Click to expand...
Thanks, Mike. That distills down the the matter into basic common sense.

Sourdough? I'm emphatically NOT a "dedicated follower of fashion"; just trying a more healthy option within the baking sphere.
 
Panasonic every time. Measure out your (organic) ingredients, lob them into the machine, choose yer programme and press 'go'; In our case we have lovely fresh bread (a mixture of wholemeal, white and granary flower) five hours later. Even though there's only two of us in the house now, I probably make five loaves a week. I even used it today to mix up our pizza dough for the Ooni oven this evening - Rob
 
Panasonic for us as well Sam we've had one for donkey's years and it's so simple, decent flour and dried yeast chuck it in, bake overnight and wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread. I do the same as Rob and mix flour types as long as the weight is right it works every time, I reduce the salt a lot and sugar a little as well.
They come up for sale on facebook etc occasionally so maybe keep an eye open if you decide to go mechanised.
 
Lons said:
.... I reduce the salt a lot and sugar a little as well....
Click to expand...
I've heard of people using sugar in bread, but I have no idea why. It works perfectly well without any.
 
I may be wrong, but I think the addition of sugar and salt are all part of the chemical process. The sugar may make instant dried yeast activate a little quicker. Salt, not only can add flavour, but can also slow down the rising process which allows the flour to develop flavour.
 
Malc2098 said:
I may be wrong, but I think the addition of sugar and salt are all part of the chemical process. The sugar may make instant dried yeast activate a little quicker. Salt, not only can add flavour, but can also slow down the rising process which allows the flour to develop flavour.
Click to expand...
I don't omit the salt just reduce the quantity to about half, doesn't seem to affect our bread in any way. I'm no expert and never will be just know what we like and results from years using the machine.
 
Mike G said:
I've heard of people using sugar in bread, but I have no idea why. It works perfectly well without any.
Click to expand...
I always assumed that was just an American thing. When I was last in America (admittedly a very long time ago), I was really surprised by how sweet all the bread tasted.
 
As a working biologist, I taught my classes (making ginger 'beer' etc) that the sugar in any beer or bread mix was to 'fuel' the yeast in anaerobic respiration, to allow maximum rate of same ("leave to rise - or, "prove" - in a warm place"). Thus, one gets bubbles of Carbon Dioxide creating fizzy 'beer'. Ditto in dough and the bubbles then expand in the heat of the oven (the tiny amount of hooch in bread dough gets evapourated off) and the bread "rises".
It would seem to be a reasonable guess that 'flat' bread has not had the benefit of anough anaerobic respiration to produce CO2 bubbles of sufficient volume and the resulting thermal expansion is disappointing?
The function of the salt I am not familiar with; at a guess, pH control?
 
I think flat breads are unleavened bread, and therefore haven't had the benefit of anaerobic respiration.

Interestingly, I found this online - When added to bread dough, salt works to tighten the gluten strands that are formed, which makes them stronger. By strengthening these gluten strands, salt enables the dough to hold carbon dioxide more efficiently.
 
We're on our 3rd bread making machine. The 1st 2 were Panasonics. Both died of PCB failure so we turned to Kenwood based on family recommendation. It's been reliable for 20 years or so except for the viton seal on the paddle shaft which is non-replacable. I thought of modifying the bin to make it replaceable but couldn't find a source for the seal, hence we are on our 3rd bin. We bake about every 5 days.
Brian
 
Malc2098 said:
I think flat breads are unleavened bread, and therefore haven't had the benefit of anaerobic respiration.
Click to expand...
Thanks Malcolm. I was aware of the distinction: flatbreads - like potato farls - are by definition, as you say, unleavened. When I typed 'flat' breads above, I was referring to imperfectly risen loaves, probably because their yeasts had run out of glucose to metabolise.

Sorry to confuse; Sam
 
John Brown said:
My Panasonic is at least 15 years old, maybe 20, and still works fine. Just lucky, I guess.
Click to expand...
Our first Panasonic saw many years of use but the bread tin non-stick lining conked out and we couldn't find a replacement one. Upshot was we had to get a new machine which apparently has an 'improved' lining - Rob
 
My first BM was branded Antony Worral-Thompson, before he screwed up his career by biting the hand that fed him. It was made by Breville, and when it gave up the ghost I bought the Breville equivalent again. But the programs were not the same and the resulting loaf was a brick. I had to develop my recipe again to suit the machine.
Then I moved house, about 2 miles. Same programme, same flour, same recipe, but bricks again. The ONLY difference was the water supply. I kid ye not.
When I had a weight-loss thing, I decided to get rid of the machine altogether, but a man cannot live without bread, so I now have a Panasonic. The cycles are all differeent again and I like my recipe, so I just use it to make the dough, then bake it by hand.
Here in France, the flour is different from the flour I bought in the UK, it has less gluten. But I've found that I can buy powdered gluten from the Bio shop and a spoonful of that makes all the difference.
My (six-month-old) Ninja died a couple of months ago and it was a fight with the retailer to get it replaced, but I do have an oven again, I feel the need to get baking again.
 
I had the 15 - 1 Ninja, which was excellent for bread - my Instant Pot doesn't have a steam bake function. It developed a fault when it wasn't more thay a few months old and Ninja agreed it would have to be replaced ................... at which point they went incommunicado. Fortunately it was bought from Amazon and it was replaced without question. My neighbour asked what the fault was and when I told him he said, yes, same as happened to mine.
 
Thank you everybody; Panasonic, if I decide to get one, seems to be the brand. I'm tempted to run with my existing big food mixer initially, see below. As regards receipe manipulation to get things to work consistently, I hear you, especially Steve M.

The motivation arose from suspected (now confirmed this morning) I have Diabetes, Type 2; it's part of a bigger medical syndrome. Discussion with my intelligent (and open to ideas) doctor has Metformin and its buddies held at bay for three months. The idea being, I try a Moseley/Med/DASH/MIND diet, on an 8-to-10 hour feeding window, to see if I can get HbA1c back below 40mmol/mol again. That requires minimal carbohydrates, especially the big hitters: spuds, rice, pasta and most breads. Some less processed flours, with sourdough receipes, seem to assist the rigorous dietary change, as does "resistant carbohydrate", but obviously, the basis of the four diets above is to wean one off carbs as completely as possible, so even a slice of toast may be detrimental. So, no bread maker, just yet.

If anyone out there has been down this remission/reversal pathway, I'd be glad, even gratified, to hear from them. I'm still learning about this new condition and its possible containment. I'm not so stupid as to consider using the word "cure".

Sam
 
A retired aquantance of ours was recently diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. He was also rather overweight. His doc told him to lose the weight, which he did by simply eating less food (no fancy dieting!) and walking, a lot, every day.

He lost both the weight and the diabetes!

Obviously every case is different, but he is living proof that it can be done.
 
Sam, I can't offer advise re diabetes but I do have some experience of very low carb diets. My daughter went on a Keto diet to help with epilepsy a while back. Now you must of course seek proper dietary advice before going down that route but have a search around for Keto recipes. She survived on just 10g of carbs per day. We probably still have some recipes around somewhere.
 
SamQ aka Ah! Q! said:
The motivation arose from suspected (now confirmed this morning) I have Diabetes, Type 2; it's part of a bigger medical syndrome. Discussion with my intelligent (and open to ideas) doctor has Metformin and its buddies held at bay for three months. The idea being, I try a Moseley/Med/DASH/MIND diet, on an 8-to-10 hour feeding window, to see if I can get HbA1c back below 40mmol/mol again. That requires minimal carbohydrates, especially the big hitters: spuds, rice, pasta and most breads. Some less processed flours, with sourdough receipes, seem to assist the rigorous dietary change, as does "resistant carbohydrate", but obviously, the basis of the four diets above is to wean one off carbs as completely as possible, so even a slice of toast may be detrimental. So, no bread maker, just yet.
Click to expand...
Another thing that's come out of recent research but doesn't seem to be widely publicised - perhaps because it threatens a large and profitable industry sector - is that 'alternative' zero-calorie sweeteners trigger the same insulin response as actual sugar and are just as bad for insulin resistance and hence type 2. They work for type 1 because they don't actually contain glucose, but if you're going down this route to control type 2 then sugar free versions of sweet foods are likely to be just as much of a problem.
 
I was at a wedding last weekend and met some old friends, one of whom used to be an avid 'social' drinker but wasn't partaking at the wedding.

I asked why and apparently he was diagnosed with type 2 and put on some special diet where he is eating zero food, just three or 4 'shakes' a day for I think 4 months he's been doing it. He's lost a ton of weight and at last test it is working and he has all but shed the type 2.

I don't know if that is one of the options you mention above, but it was a surprise to me and if it isn't something you've already looked at then might be worth asking?
 
Sam, I cut out carbs and upped the amount of fat and eggs in my diet and I no longer get glucose crashes. Also cut out processed food, basically a similar diet to our grandparents, good old fashioned home cooking.
It was hard coming of bred, but now after a few years being clean I don’t miss it.

My business partner has been type 1 since 8 years old, he recommended avoiding all low fat, low sugar healthy living foods, in his case they only benefit the insulin manufacturers….
 
Thank you all so very much, Folks. Your support and information are appreciated.

Medicine is complicated and, to some extent, unique to each individual. In my case, I don't qualify for the "shakes" diet mentioned above; I'm 68 and the upper NHS limit is 65. I suspect the costs of mimicking it from my own purse would be difficult.
The big thing is to lose weight - about 35 pounds - as rapidly as possible. "Keto" is a subtly different approach, and (for other good medical reasons) I am not considering doing a "pure" keto.
The pitfalls of sweeteners I am well aware of. Scandalous.
The four diets I mentioned several posts ago emphasise fresh ingredients and what Jonathan highlighted, simple home cooking, providing 800 to 2000kcal per diem, depending on which approach you may chose to embrace.
What I am getting out of reading the Diabetes UK website and forum etc is that less, and unprocessed, food, home prepared, wins the day. I've found several threads along the lines of eezageeza and Trim above: "lose weight, lose diabetes".
I think I have some re-education and re-structuring to do! I'll drop back in here around Hallowe'en to let you know how it went.
 
Panasonic for me everytime, gets used at least twice a week and the smell of fresh bread when you come down to breakfast in the morning..........

they are readily available on FB marketplace/gumtree etc and I have seen lots at car boot sales ( i bought my spare one that sits in the garage for now for £2)
 
I use the Panasonic bread maker out of laziness (and frugality). Exactly the same recipe works as a no-knead loaf when cooked in a Dutch oven( big old Le Creuset casserole). The Dutch oven loaf tastes way better, but is a bit more faff.
 
I've seen this Dutch oven business but never used it. I use a rectangular tin and am very happy. But I do have a cast iron pot (not Le Creuset, but an Aldi knock-off, very nice), I think I need to try it out.

If the crock needs to be preheated, how do I do the second proving?
 
Do the second proving on a tabletop or wooden board, covered with an upside down bowl. Once your pot is up to temperature, just drop the proved loaf straight into the middle of it.

If you don't fancy that operation, you can cut a circle of baking paper the size of the base of your pot, with 'wings' extending from opposite sides. A sort of =O= shape. Then set the loaf on the paper to prove, and you can lift it up by the side strips to lower it in more gently. The paper is thin and conductive enough that it won't affect the baking.
 
I do lid on for 25 minutes then lid off for 20, for a normal 500g loaf. You'll probably need to adjust for your recipe and oven, but roughly half and half is what you're after.

The lid traps the moisture and has the effect of a steam oven to let the crust expand, before the lid comes off to dry it out.
 
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