Why You Should Get a Breadmaker

Ever since we inherited our in-laws’ breadmaker about 10 years ago, we’ve been making our own bread – one loaf every 2-3days.  There are so many great reasons why we do it, and I think that more people should!

  • The taste and smell of freshly baked bread!  Can’t beat it!
  • I know exactly what goes into it – no unpronounceable ingredients or preservatives
  • We can make it as healthy (or unhealthy) as we’d like – using white or whole wheat or gluten-free flour
  • Homemade bread is much more filling for our boys than store-bought (we can go through a loaf of store bought in no time!)
  • In that same vein, have you seen the price for a loaf of bread these days? $2-5 a loaf?!! Or gluten-free, for that matter?  $6-7
  • Making pizza dough – we use it once a week for this purpose

Reasons why people don’t end up using their breadmakers (and my response)

  • People think it’s too much work, but we just make it a part of our routine.  Find a good recipe that works, tape it to the outside of the breadmaker, so it’s easy. (You can kind of see the ripped paper on our picture above with the pizza dough recipe we’ve used for 10 years).
  • If people have had a few recipes turn out poorly, they tend to give up.  We don’t experiment very often – when we find a recipe that works, we stick to it!
  • Some say that breadmakers are too expensive and you don’t save any money because of that cost.  We go through one every 9-18 months or so, but we never spend more than $20 on it.  Value Village and other stores often sell them for 10-20 dollars in great  condition.

 There are a few accessories that we’ve picked up over the years which make it easier to use homemade bread.  I love this square Tupperware container.  It’s the perfect size and shape of a loaf of homemade bread.  We usually leave it on our counter – since we finish our loaf in about 2 days.  If not, we put it in the fridge.

This knife is great – extremely sharp, and it helps you not to cut to thick a slice (often a problem with homemade bread).  I can cut nice thin slices with this, and the cutting board helps catch all the crumbs that come with homemade bread.

Have I missed anything?  Do you use your breadmaker? Make it automatic, have the machine and recipes accessible.  Any other tips to share?

In case you’d like it, here’s our recipe for pizza dough.  It makes 3 large pizzas – enough for 1.5-2 meals for us.

Combine on the Dough setting:
2 c. water
1 tsp. salt
4 1/2 Tbsp. olive oil
6 c. flour (we do half whole wheat and half white)
3 tsp. yeast (not quick rise)

Check out the rest of the pizza recipe here.

 
 
Here is a great recipe for hamburger buns that we love.
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Jenn vanOosten

I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and love my city. I'm a Netflixer, choral music geek, bookworm, inventor of recipes (I take Artistic Licence on EVERYTHING that I make), wife of one, mother of two, and owner of a neurotic Schnauzer. I respect people who respect others. I love good food that's well done, but my favourite lunch is KD & hotdogs. With ketchup. I'm addicted to Clearance Shopping. I will ALWAYS get the product that I want at the price that I want, eventually.

6 comments

  1. this is a nice tip 🙂 happy UBC

  2. I don’t know why we stopped using ours. We’ve had one for more than 10 years. It looks just like the one above. I’ll have to dig it out of the server and put it to use. we used to love not only the bread but the fresh smell and eating it warm. mmmm. Thank you for the reminder!!

    Missy Bell
    http://www.peaceandhappinessproject.com
    http://www.wheretheghostslive.wordpress.com

  3. Going to have to try those recipes Marya. I love mine too, just kind of go through phases of using and not using it. Thanks for the tips! They’re good! And so true about the smell, just love it!!

    • Isn’t it great?! We can actually smell it from outside of the house! Or we set the timer and wake up to fresh bread! (just make sure it works properly, or else you are walking up to a bunch of ingredients just sitting there… 🙂

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