Breadmachines?

[donutsweeper]

Bad wrists and general health issues prevent me from making bread from scratch as often as I'd like and a bit back I pulled back out and started using a very old bread machine passed down to me by someone combining households ages back. Considering I got it over 20 yrs ago and it was used at the time it's not surprising that it finally died on me. Sad and frustrating, but not surprising.

Anyone have any experience with machines currently on the market? I didn't wind up getting anything for Hanukkah for myself so I have a bit of a budget but I'd rather not just buy one blind or based off Amazon reviews if I can help it. The super well regarded Zojirushi is currently close to half off at Amazon and I am rather tempted by it especially since I have enough gift cards I earned via swagbucks to cover it. Most review sites online put it as the (or one of the) best, but I thought I'd see if anyone had any experience with it or any others before plunking down that kind of money.

Comments

[rosefox]

YES GET A ZOJIRUSHI. I love love love love love ours. King Arthur Flour has great bread mixes (including GF ones) if you want to make it even easier on yourself.

We also used our previous bread machine to make jam, which was awesome magic; jam and bread both require a lot of stirring and steady heating, so it makes sense that a bread machine can do both, but it was still pretty wild to put grape pulp and pectin and sugar and calcium water in a machine and get jam out, with no work beyond sterilizing jars to put it in. I haven't tried that in the Zojirushi yet but I expect it would be very easy to do.

One note: once you've baked wheat bread in a bread machine, it can never make strictly GF bread no matter how thoroughly you clean it. There are just too many crevices. But I don't recall that being an issue for your household.

[donutsweeper]

There's no GF issue here, but that's good to know.

Ooh, I used to make jam all the time but had to stop due to health issues, it would be great to start making some again.

Thanks for letting me know how well it works for you. I think I'm going to go for it then.

[rosefox]

Oh, one other perk: you can knead/rise dough in it, and then turn the dough out and shape it into loaves and bake them in the oven. I want to use it to make challah that way. And maybe baked donuts. :D

[donutsweeper]

Oooh. My old machine technically had a bread cycle but was really touchy so I never bothered with it. I wouldn't be able to make my traditional recipe for challah (it involves a sponge) but I could experiment with other recipes.

Going to go order it. With any luck I'll be making bread with the new machine in a little over a week :)

[rosefox]

\o/