Bread machine

A bread machine (more usually known in Australian and British English as a bread maker or breadmaker) is a home appliance for baking bread. It consists of a bread pan with a paddle mounted in the centre, in a small special-purpose oven, with a control panel. Different breadmakers are differentiated by the options available both in their preprogrammed recipes, as well as the ability to alter the programming, and features for delayed introduction of nuts and dried fruits that would be crushed if introduced too early.

The first breadmaker was released in Japan in 1986. A decade later they had become popular in the United Kingdom and the United States.

To create a loaf of bread, flour, water, salt, sugar, yeast, butter and milk powder (or fresh milk) are measured onto the bread pan and the pan is then placed in the breadmaker. The machine takes a few hours to make a loaf of bread, first by turning the ingredients into dough using the paddle, then baking the loaf. Once the bread has been baked and given time to cool, the pan is extracted from the breadmaker and the bread freed from the pan.

While the earliest breadmakers were very restricted in the form of the loaf they produced, sometimes no more than an extruded cylinder, they still do not give the flexibility of hand preparation. When the paddle, now at the bottom of the loaf, is removed, it leaves a hole in the bottom of the bread. The size of this hole varies with the breadmaker, but can result in ragged slices in the middle of the loaf.

Packets of bread mix are available, specifically designed for breadmakers, consisting of the ingredients pre-measured. Only water needs to be added.

Shelf life

Generally, homemade bread goes stale faster than bread from a commercial baker because it doesn't include additives. However, it is possible to use a sourdough starter in breadmaker dough recipes. Sourdough contains a symbiotic brew of yeast and lactobacteria cultures. Lactic acid produced by sourdough's lactobacteria greatly preserves bread, as well as enhancing its flavor.

Breadmakers are equipped with a timer to control when the breadmaking begins. This allows them, for example, to be loaded in the evening but only begin baking early in the morning, to produce a freshly-baked loaf for breakfast. They can also be set only to make dough, for instance to be used to make pizza. Some can also be set to make other things besides bread, such as jam or mochi, a kind of Japanese rice cake. One of the most recent innovations is the facility to add nuts and fruit during the kneading process automatically from a tray.

Nutritional considerations

Commercial fats

Using a breadmaker is a convenient way to avoid the hydrogenated vegetable oil that supermarkets add to their bread to make it bake more quickly.

Phytate issues

Breadmakers are used in laboratory studies of the breakdown of phytates in breadmaking, since they remove the variability of human bakers.

However, a home bread machine does not allow time for the enzyme phytase to break the phytic acid bonding with certain minerals that are essential for human nutrition. Traditional bread making produces a mix that spends 8-12 hours or more in the form of a dough, before baking. This time is required for the phytase enzymes to release the mineral constituents in the flour. (All grains are similar, so this applies to rye, wheat or corn bread, etc.)

Therefore the hidden cost of quick and convenient, fresh, home-machine-made bread is diminished human nutrition, as the mineral phytate molecules are too large to pass across the stomach lining and into the bloodstream. In particular, the bioavailability of iron is reduced. The molecules are also unaffected by digestive juices and colonic bacteria, so are lost in the excreta. This is a common problem with all high-speed bread making processes, such as the Chorleywood Bread Process.Complete fermentation of phytates, a longer process than is used in commercial breadmaking, increases the bioavailability of iron in cereal grains.

Brands

• AFK
• Black & Decker
• Breadman
• Breville
• Cuisinart
• Kenwood
• Hamilton Beach
• Hinari
• Magic Chef (Red Star)
• Morphy Richards
• Oster (owned by Sunbeam)
• Panasonic
• Salton (Trades as Russell Hobbs in UK)
• Sunbeam Products
• Toastmaster
• West Bend
• Wel-Bilt
• Zojirushi