After about 12 years my trusty old breadmaker recently gave up on me, well to be more precise, I gave up on it. It was making all kinds of odd noises and only baked bread properly with a tea towel over the top of it, my wheat free bread wasn’t working at all. So I’ve splashed out and treated myself to a brand new shiny Kenwood breadmaker with a special gluten free setting (I’ve not had one of those before).
Since getting the new machine we’ve gone a bit bread-tastic and I decided to trial us making all our own bread. Up till this point I’d made bread for myself and the toddler but my husband is a bread monster and will easly devour half a bought loaf. Yes really, a bread monster and somehow he is the lower end of a normal BMI.
So over the past month we have made all our own bread, both wheat free and normal bread. The result is that the house regularly smells edible, we are all eating bread which contains “no nasties” and getting through less bread. At first I thought this was a coincedence….. but my husband tells me the homemade bread is so much more filling so he just can’t eat as much of it, which means he is eating healthier and we are saving a few pennies too – RESULT!
Personally I love my breadmaker, I know it’s probably not as good as hand making it, but it gives a great result and takes me 5 minutes to throw all the ingredients into the machine. Why not try out making your own bread for a month and see the difference? We aren’t going back to the shop bought version, see what your household thinks.
My Top Breadmaking Tips:
Don’t set the bread maker late at night, it will make the house smell amazing and you will want to eat bread in the middle of the night!
Do try using a delay timer so you have fresh bread to wake up to.
Use less salt in your homemade bread, it won’t last as long as the shop bought version but your loaves will be smaller so you will get through it faster.
Homemade bread can be made, sliced and frozen, then used from the freezer.
Keep your yeast in date!
Use either half and half white and wholemeal flour or all wholemeal flour to get some wholegrains in.
Try adding a variety of seeds to your bread for texture and taste.
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The other reason home made breadmaker bread won’t keep as long is that you don’t add enzymic flour improvers.
I’ve never tried it with gluten free but I’m very much into sponge and sourdough method doughs. I see no reason why it shouldn’t work with gluten free. The reason my breadmaker is now in the garage is that there are no options to extend the fermentation times to give a sponge like bread. It’s annoying because whenever I do make bread it then has to be by hand and I get right fed up with kneading!
Ooo I didn’t know that, thanks. Always lovely to learn more from someone into the food science area 🙂
I’m planning to try out a few more sourdough GF recipes over the summer, but I also don’t have the kneading skills and the time for making it by hand, the breadmaker takes 5 mins to put the ingredients in. I also love it for the dough setting – pizza base etc…