Bread Machines

A bread machine or breadmaker is a home appliance for baking bread. It consists of a bread pan with a paddle mounted in the center, in a small special-purpose oven, with a control panel. more...

While most bread machines have different cycles for different kinds of dough (including straight white bread, whole grain, European-style (sometimes labeled "French"), and dough-only for pizza dough and shaped loaves baked in the oven), many also have a timer to allow the bread machine to activate without operator attendance, and some high-end models allow the user to program a custom cycle.

History

The first breadmaker was released in Japan in 1986. A decade later they had become popular in the United Kingdom and the United States. While not viable for commercial use due to the fixed loaf shape and the limited duty cycle, bread machines often produce the best results when dealing with kneaded doughs .

Use and features

To create a loaf of bread, ingredients are measured into the bread pan in a specified order (usually liquids first, with solid ingredients layered on top) and the pan is then placed in the breadmaker. The order of ingredients is important because the instant yeast used in breadmakers is activated by contact with water, so the yeast and the water must be kept apart until the program starts.

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, the pan is extracted from the breadmaker and the bread freed from the pan. The paddle, now at the bottom of the loaf, is removed, leaving a small paddle-shaped indentation or hole. The shape of the finished loaf is often considered unusual, with many early bread machines producing a vertically-oriented, square or cylindrical loaf very different from commercial breads; however, more recent units generally have a more traditional-appearing horizontal pan.

Read more at Wikipedia.org