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Last week I went to a local boot fair, and was aimlessly strolling round with no real idea of what to purchase.  I was mainly looking for things / ideas for the house and some good books to read.  However for the most part it was full of tack!  However I spied a Kenwood BM 200 Breadmaker (similar to the BM250 here) for just £10.  It was in a very good condition (though missing the measuring spoon) so I broke an unwritten rule and bought an electrical item at a boot fair.  I had been wanting to try a breadmaker for a while but felt unwilling to spend out on a machine and find I only use it once!

My first loaf

I thought I would start simple with a “regular white loaf”.  My only memory of making bread was creating one in the shape of a hedgehog when I was in Primary school, nothing so advanced this time, just a simple loaf!  I was actually surprised at how few ingredients are used and how cheaply you can bake your own bread.  I measured out all the ingredients and put them in the bread maker.

Then I switched it to setting one, regular white loaf and pressed start.  The baking process from start to finish was 2 hrs 45 mins.  To start off I watched it spin round kneading and mixing the ingredients together.  At first I thought that the materials in the corner were being missed but all looked well when I came back 5 minutes later.  Midway through the rising process I snuck a peek through the viewing window and saw the mixture had risen to an inch off the top of the loaf tin, infact I wondered if I had chosen the large load would it have overflowed?  Minutes later I looked back in and was disappointed to see that it had dropped back down, I guess it was one big bubble?  Does anyone know if this is normal or were my measurements a bit off?  Leave a comment!

The last 45 minutes are the actual baking time, the machine got very hot and there is now a freshly baked smell through the house.  Once the baking had ended I removed the tin from the machine, you can see below where the bread dropped back down.

Removing the bread from the tin wasn’t as easy as I hoped, The bread didn’t stick at all, the kneading blade did, and the tin needed a swift whack to remove the bread.  So here is the final loaf.

I expected it to stand a bit taller, and also to be a bit more “bubbly” (I’m sure that’s a technical breadmaking term).  But actually I put some butter on the still warm bread and it tasted just as good if not better than the supermarket varieties. I think next I will have to try a large loaf next so that it’s tall enough for sandwiches and then maybe experiment with wholemeal and seeds.

Does anyone else use a breadmaker?  What are your favourite recipes?

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