Guest blog by Adam
I’ve had a breadmaker of one sort or another for around 6 years so I’m well-versed in different functions – and results. My most recent breadmaker is the Panasonic SD-2500WXC and it has swift become my favourite. Let me tell you why…
You may think all breadmakers are by large, the same, in that they make bread for you to enjoy the fruits of your labour and then simply consume. That’s certainly true to a degree but in my experience they all vary – in both budget and functionality.
Starting with build quality: this model is exceptionally robust. I’ve had this one on the go pretty much every other day for over two years and it’s still going strong.
Cooking results are superb, pretty much perfect every time, however if I ‘freestyle’ or don’t correctly follow the ingredients then results can go horribly wrong but that’s not the machines fault! Let my 6 years of occasional errors stress this: follow a recipe and weigh your ingredients carefully – it can dramatically affect the results! The recipe/cookery book that comes with this model is great. Once you’ve mastered the basic bread recipe this machine features a mode that beeps at the correct time to add additional ingredients i.e. olives, capers, sun dried tomatoes etc. My tip is to add dry ingredients, such as herbs, at the start.
My favourite feature by far is the timer and ability to choose a small or large loaf. I love to bake a small loaf overnight so it’s ready for breakfast straight out of the maker as I pour my first cup of coffee. I tend to make a small loaf because this bread will last a maximum of two days before turning stale – because there are none of the harsh preservatives that see a supermarket loaf last two weeks! Once stale, I use my bread for delicious croutons or blitz for breadcrumbs. The ability to pick the size of the loaf is a great function and the recipe cards are set for the different sizes. You can tell Panasonic spent a lot of time with a team of food scientists getting the recipes perfect to work with their machine.
Top Tip: if you use the timer, add all wet ingredients into the tin with the blade up and ready to go, sprinkle flour on top to create a floating island of flour then top that with the sugar and yeast. If you submerge the yeast and sugar in the wet ingredients they start to react overnight and can lead to many varied tasting and textured breads.
It does a huge variety of doughs and speciality breads, so whatever your needs it should tick all the boxes. I especially liked the ability to make pizza dough as I have made my own bases in the past by hand and it’s a messy and labour intense bit of work for little reward. However, chucking the ingredients in and then coming back in an hour or so is great, you can still portion out your sizes and roll them to the thickness you desire with next to no mess. GREAT!
Read more about the machine or order here or find your local store here.
