Bread machines

Like any form of home cooking, a bread machine gives you control of the food you eat. Baking a loaf from scratch allows you to choose when your Real Bread is made and to know exactly what has gone into it.

If tomorrow morning you want to wake up to a loaf using locally stone ground wholemeal flour, water, yeast and a little salt, with no added fat, sugar, artificial additives or enzymes, a bread maker will let you.

Some people who use a machine will stick to it, which, as long as they're baking Real Bread, is fine by us. Others may say - 'hang on, all it's doing is mixing then baking dough - I can do that myself and have greater control over the process and the type of loaf I end up with.'

Of course, we're delighted when people roll up their sleeves and delve into the flour to mix, knead and shape by hand but there are many reasons why the Real Bread Campaign also supports the use of machines.

Accessibility
Saving energy and cost
Pass it on
Ethical Consumer
Recipes
Links

Accessibility

For every challenge we find, the Real Bread Campaign aims to find a range of different answers. There are many reasons that a home might be without Real Bread and for some a bread machine is the best solution.

Perhaps you:

Don’t live near a bakery
Haven’t quite worked out how to fit home baking into your life
Don’t have the strength in your hands or wrists to knead
Don’t have an oven

Then maybe a machine is the answer for you.

Saving energy and cost

When compared to baking in a domestic oven, a bread machine is also a great way to save energy (and therefore reduce carbon emissions) and money. The following average energy consumption and cost figures are taken from a comparison of bread machines carried out by Which? in 2008.

White bread – standard program
Average cost: 5p
Average energy consumption: 0.36 kWh per loaf
Average cycle time: 3 hours 18 minutes

Wholemeal bread – standard program
Average cost: 4p
Average energy consumption: 0.36 kWh per loaf
Average cycle time: 3 hours 54 minutes

The figures quoted are average prices, based on average energy consumption and worked out using the Which? standard unit of electricity cost of 12.48p per kWh.

By comparison, The Energy Saving Trust told the Real Bread Campaign that the energy used in baking a loaf in an electric oven is about 1.6kWh per use and a gas oven typically consumes around 1.5kWh of energy per use.

Adding in the cost of ingredients, even if you use the most expensive flour you can find, the price of your Real Bread will rival that of the cheapest ‘value’ wrapped, sliced loaf – wherever that was made and whatever with.

Pass it on

Now, we’re not encouraging anyone to go out and buy a bread machine. According to a 2010 study by Mintel, 36% of people who receive bread machines as presents don't use them, and judging by figures from previous annual surveys by esure, there could be up to 10 million of the things sitting around the country gathering dust next to smoothie makers, foot spas and the like. Either way, there are plenty to go around.

If you have a machine but now get your Real Bread another way – perhaps from your local bakery, at a local farmers’ market, as a member of a veggie box scheme, or baking by hand – then how about passing it on to someone else who could make good use of it?

Here are some ideas for where to pick up or pass on that gadget.

In all cases, you must seek and take the advice of the service you are using regarding safety when meeting to make an exchange, electrical safety, stolen goods etc. The Real Bread Campaign, Sustain and The Real Food Festival cannot take responsibility for using any of these services or for any consequences of doing so.

Freegle – a national network of local groups with online fora that allow members to post free advertisements for items and services they are offering or want. No money is involved in the exchanges. Some local groups will be holding events to celebrate National Real Bread Maker Week.

Freecycle - '...helps people who have things they no longer need to give them away to people who do need them and, in the process, keeps many useful items from filling up our landfill sites. Freecycle encourages us to get rid of things that we no longer need and promotes community involvement in the process.'

LetsAllShare '...is a FREE site that helps you rent, borrow, lend or giveaway things amongst friends, neighbours, colleagues or anyone really. You control what you share, with whom & how, i.e for free, for a fee or both!'

ooffoo 'On ooffoo you can reuse, recycle, swap, sell, give away, write & blog, enter our latest competition, vote, debate and discuss our latest hot topic, find recipes & useful eco tips and much more.'

Other exchange sites

Don't Dump That
vSkips
Gumtree

Other possibilities

Classified ads in a local newspaper or website
Cash Converters and other pawn shops – You won’t get much for your old machine but you could pick a second hand one up for a reasonable price
Cards in the window of a local shop or Post Office
Word of mouth

...and if you have other suggestions of how and where campaign supporters could find or pass on a bread machine, please let us know.

Ethical Consumer

The buyer's guide in the September 2010 issue of Ethical Consumer magazine featured bread machines. For the, the magazine researches and rates brands against five main criteria: environment, people, animals, politics and sustainability. Though we advocate using a machine that already out there, if you are planning to buy a new one, this guide will give you some food for thought.

To read the guide alongside an article by Real bread Campaign project officer Chris Young on Real Bread in a machine, click here.

Recipes

Most bread machine recipes call for instant or fast acting yeast. In theory, this is fine within the campaign’s basic definition of Real Bread, though you might struggle to find instant yeast that will keep your loaves within this definition as almost all contain one or more added chemical or enzyme.

See our companions page for a list of additive-free brands that we have found in the UK.

We are on the search for tried and tested recipes that use fresh yeast, dried active yeast or a sourdough (aka wild yeast) starter. If you have one of your own that you’d like to share here, please email us.

Andrew Whitley’s basic Real Bread in a machine
New adventures in sourdough

Real Bread Campaign