Some Bread Maker advice needed - please

[Greyhound Dude]

Okay all you homebodies, I need some advice. My girlfriend wants a breadmaker for Christmas and I have no clue which one is good, makes the best tasting bread or anything. She has given me no advice other than her saying "Use your best judgement". Kind of hard when I have no clue what I'm doing!! Any recommendations would be helpful.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Greyhound Dude

[earendel]

Okay all you homebodies, I need some advice. My girlfriend wants a breadmaker for Christmas and I have no clue which one is good, makes the best tasting bread or anything. She has given me no advice other than her saying "Use your best judgement". Kind of hard when I have no clue what I'm doing!! Any recommendations would be helpful.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Greyhound Dude

My wife swears by the Black and Decker model that she got several years ago - after our fire she replaced it with the exact same model. However the bread maker per se is not the key - it's the ingredients that make the bread yummy.

[Spokesman for MBFFB]

Okay all you homebodies, I need some advice. My girlfriend wants a breadmaker for Christmas and I have no clue which one is good, makes the best tasting bread or anything. She has given me no advice other than her saying "Use your best judgement". Kind of hard when I have no clue what I'm doing!! Any recommendations would be helpful.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Greyhound Dude

MBFFB® says he is glad to see you still don't have a clue what you are doing.

But MBFFB® says he's also happy to see you back....

[silvercamaro]

Okay all you homebodies, I need some advice. My girlfriend wants a breadmaker for Christmas and I have no clue which one is good, makes the best tasting bread or anything. She has given me no advice other than her saying "Use your best judgement". Kind of hard when I have no clue what I'm doing!! Any recommendations would be helpful.

Thanks in advance for any help,
Greyhound Dude

Since she doesn't have her heart set on a particular brand, go to any department store's kitchen department and pick one based on (a) price and (b) any noteworthy features that seem appealing to you. They are fairly simple machines, with kneading and heating as the only two essential operations.

[tlynn78]

no advice other than her saying "Use your best judge

Maybe it's just me, but this sounds like woman-speak for "I'd like a breadmaker, but there'd better be a necklace or some such tucked into it...."


I'm just sayin'...

t.

[peacock2121]

I do not have an opinion about the brand you should get.

Things to think about:

You can get one that will also make just dough. There are some that do not have that option. If you can make just dough, then you can also make pizza.

You have choices about the size of bread to make in some of them - 1 pound or 2. You have a choice of it telling you when to add fruit to the dough.

Look for one that has a 'real' loaf pan shape. I am not sure if they all do now, when I first bought mine, they didn't.

Another great feature is the one that let's you program it to start in the middle of the night so you wake up to fresh made bread in the morning.

This feature can only be usedd successfuly once you are sure of your recipe. The bread maker took trial and error for me - the measurments of flour were not always right.

If you think this is something you will have for years, then it is worth investing in a convection one, maybe.

Some let you know when the kneading is done, so you can take out the paddle and don't end up with that hole in the bread.

That's about all I got.

[Lower than Beast 6.5]

From what pea wrote, it looks like I have the Flintstone's breadmaker. It is older than three of my kids. It makes bread. Just bread. Not shaped like a traditional loaf.

But it works, so what the heck....