How to Choose a Bread Maker

Nothing tastes better than hot bread straight from the oven. With a bread maker, you can toss in the ingredients and do something else until your savory loaf is ready for sampling.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Product Brochures
• Bread Makers

1. Make sure you have enough storage space for a bread maker.

2. Choose the capacity of the bread maker based on the amount of bread your family eats. Most produce 1-, 1 1/2- or 2-lb. loaves.

3. Select a bread maker with a delay timer if you want bread ready for dinner or fresh for breakfast.

4. If you just want to make dough (as for pizza or cinnamon rolls), choose a bread maker that will make dough but not cook it.

5. Choose a bread maker that signals you to add ingredients during the bread making process. This is a good feature if you need to add fruits or nuts.

6. Pick a bread maker with a "keep warm" function if you're not likely to be around when the bread is done.

7. Check for other special features, such as crust control, French bread or whole wheat bread cycles, or cycles for fruit or nut breads.

8. Study the warranty and service options.

Tips & Warnings

• No matter how much bread your family consumes now, when you have hot bread coming out of a bread maker, their consumption will increase considerably. Take this into account when choosing the size loaf your bread maker will produce.

• Some bread makers make round loaves, some make elongated loaves in a bucket-style container and some make horizontal loaves. If you have a preference, keep looking until you find what you want.

• Several companies now have bread mixes made especially for bread makers. They're available at grocery stores.

• Bread that sits in the bread maker for a considerable amount of time after it's through baking sometimes gets soft or soggy, so don't put too much stock in the "keep warm" feature.