Posts tagged sunbeam

My history with small appliances is hit and miss. Our food processor moved in with my mum a couple of years ago. The juicer found a new home on Craig’s List. But my breadmaker? It’s here to stay.

Last spring I bought a Sunbeam breadmaker on amazon.ca. It was an inexpensive model (about $80) with decent reviews and seemed like a good “starter” machine. I was reluctant to spend too much, just in case making bread at home wasn’t as easy and delicious as I hoped it would be. My Aunt in Yorkshire inspired me to get started with a breadmaker. I had some fresh bread at her house and loved it. It was nothing like the white, white bread I remember from the breadmakers that were briefly popular when I was a little girl.

My kids eat quite a lot of bread and making my own is a nice way to make sure they’re getting great quality stuff. I can buy organic flour, add extras like flax and wheat germ and skip preservatives all together. I find making my own bread economical too.

Here are some of the features I love about my breadmaker:

• It has a timer function so you can set it up to start baking while you are asleep or out of the house and then when you wake up/get home you have freshly made bread. Very efficient.
• It’s incredibly easy to use. It takes about 3 minutes to put everything together for a loaf and then anywhere from 2 hours and 40 minutes to 3 hours and 40 minutes to bake a good loaf (there is a quick-bread setting but I have not had success with it).
• I love playing with the recipes, adding extra healthy ingredients like flax and wheat germ and replacing some of the flour with whole wheat or corn meal or other interesting flours.
• My kids love the bread. It is delicious! So even if they shun the rest of their dinner, I know the bread was full of good stuff.
• If I time it right I can put some frozen homemade soup or chili in the crock pot and then set the timer on the breadmaker and come home from an afternoon out to DINNER COMPLETELY READY, making me look like a total super star with very little effort.
• It is so simple to clean — as a matter of fact sometimes the bread comes out of the pan so well that it doesn’t seem as though I need to clean it at all.

So if you’re like me and you love the glory of homemade stuff (“Who me? Yes, I bake my own bread.”) but not necessarily the hard work, I highly recommend getting yourself a breadmaker! Here’s a link to the model I purchased on amazon.ca (it’s on sale for $69 right now!): http://tinyurl.com/6qvpzcu