4 Best Bread Makers To Buy
1. Panasonic SD-2511KXC review: A capable all-round bread maker
A relatively expensive breadmaker that produces consistently good results, but there's better Panasonic models
There’s nothing particularly fancy about Panasonic’s SD-2511. It’s a simple, unfussy design, but the no-nonsense approach produces some impressive results. It's available in both black and white, we tested the black model (around £160) but the functionally identical white version is inexplicably available for around £30 less.
The bread maker is tall and relatively slim. I preferred it to the squatter bread makers I’ve seen, as it means the SD-2511 takes up significantly less space on your kitchen worktop. It may be a problem if you want to hide your bread maker away in a cupboard, however.
The SD-2511’s plain design hides all the features you could need. There’s an automatic fruit and nut dispenser for speciality loaves, and the bread maker will automatically adjust its baking program according to the ambient temperature of your kitchen; leaving the bread to rise for longer in colder environments, for example.
The SD-2511 comes with two bread paddles, one of which is specifically for rye bread, measuring spoons and two measuring cups, which can also double as storage for sourdough starter. The bread maker’s overall unfussy design extends to the manual, too. In some ways it would have been nice to see a full-colour booklet with appetising photos of different types of bread on a machine this expensive, but the SD-2511’s simple booklet does the job. After a brief overview of why the various ingredients you use in a bread maker matter, you’re given simple instructions on how to use the machine followed by 33 bread, jam and compote recipes.
The standard recipes are simple: you just need to add yeast, flour, salt, sugar, butter and water to the bread pan. There’s no need for milk powder or eggs, for example. Out of all the designs I’ve seen, Panasonic’s pan is the easiest to fit into the bread maker: it just drops in, and you use a quick bayonet twist to lock it into place. Likewise, the fruit and nut dispenser is easy to remove and stick on your scales to measure out ingredients or to clean.
The interface is simple, too. There are dedicated buttons to choose the bread recipe, the size of loaf and how baked, or dark, you like your crust. After that, you just need to set the delay timer in 10-minute chunks; put your ingredients in at 11pm, set the timer for 8 hours and your bread will be ready and fresh at 7am. Bear in mind that it will need a while to cool on a wire rack, so make sure you get it out of the pan before your shower.
When it comes to the bread I baked, the SD-2511 was all about consistency. Using standard Tesco strong flour, white, wholemeal and raisin breads all came out perfectly shaped, and I had no problems with bread rising too much and collapsing, as on other bread makers I’ve tested.
The white loaf was evenly baked on the crust, with a pleasant fluffy texture. There were some small air holes, but nothing too drastic. The bread itself was very slightly chewy, however. My wholemeal loaf came out perfectly shaped, with a reasonably even texture inside, and the bread was tasty with a slightly stretchy, chewy consistency.
The star of the show was definitely the raisin loaf, which was just lovely. It had a fluffy texture, sweet taste and an even distribution of fruit throughout the loaf; the fruit distribution was even better once I read the instructions properly and cut all the raisins in half before baking.
The Panasonic SD-2511 is easy to use and produces consistently good, if not outstanding, standard bread loaves. I was particularly impressed with the raisin bread, too. I feel that the Panasonic SD-ZB2512’s superior white loaves make it worth the extra cash in the long run, but some might balk at the additional £60 upfront.
Click Here To Learn More About Panasonic SD-2511B Multi-Function Bread Maker - Black
2. Russell Hobbs Breadmaker 18036 review
A cheap and no-frills breadmaker, but the results are underwhelming
Along with Kenwood’s BM260, the Russell Hobbs 18036 is the most compact breadmaker I’ve reviewed. At under £50, it’s also among the cheapest, along with the recently-reduced Morphy Richards Fastbake Cooltouch.
It’s apparent where savings have been made. The breadmaker comes with a flimsy measuring cup, and the manual is back to basics: there’s not even space to print recipes in neat tables, so they can be tricky to follow at first. The manual also doesn’t have any recipes for raisin or fruit bread, which is unusual.
The wipe-clean control panel, with its flush buttons, sits on the top of the unit so you don’t have to bend down too much, but the tiny display isn’t especially easy to read. It does the job, however, with just a few keypresses needed to set the recipe, loaf size, crust colour and the amount of time before you want your loaf to be ready.
The display doesn’t show you where you are in the baking cycle, and there’s no breakdown of the timings for each bread recipe, so it’ll be tricky to add any extra ingredients if you’re making a custom loaf.
I wasn’t keen on the way you fit the bread pan. On most breadmakers I’ve looked at, the baking chamber has a bayonet fitting at the bottom, so you drop the pan into place and give it a twist to lock it. The 18036 has no bayonet and just relies on friction, so you have to jam the pan down until it sticks. This makes it harder to know when the pan is properly in place, and it also makes it more of a challenge to remove at the end of the baking cycle.
The bread recipes are straightforward, requiring only skimmed milk powder on top of the usual flour, oil, yeast, salt, sugar and water. I was able to buy everything I needed in the supermarket.
During operation, the 18036 doesn’t wobble around like the Sage Custom Loaf, but it’s nonetheless quite noisy. During the kneading phase it makes strained whizzing noises like a poor impression of a moped.
The white loaf looked fantastic straight out of the breadmaker. It was evenly-risen, and the inside showed a generally even texture with hardly any air holes. The bread was denser at the bottom of the loaf, however, and it didn’t have the light, fluffy texture I look for.
The wholemeal loaf was just about acceptable. It was uneven on the top, where some parts had risen more than others, but there was no sign of collapse. I found the bread to have a rather rubbery texture, though.
I also tried the bread’s Fastbake setting, which can make a loaf in just 55 minutes. Unfortunately, this was underbaked, doughy and not very nice at all.
The Russell Hobbs 18036 is a reasonable no-frills breadmaker for the price, but none of the loaves it produced were particularly impressive. At this price the Morphy Richards Fastbake Cooltouch is a better buy, thanks to the far superior white loaves it can produce.
Read More About Russell Hobbs 18036 Breadmaker with Fast-Bake Function - White Find Here.
3. Morphy Richards Fastbake Cooltouch Breadmaker review
Now at just £45 this bargain bread maker is a great buy for making white loaves
Morphy Richards’ bread maker isn’t a particularly arresting sight. It’s a big white blob, a little bit like a giant misshapen egg. Though we're willing to forgive it that, as it's recently crashed down in price from £120 to just £45.
The Fastbake scores some immediate points elsewhere too, thanks to a simple innovation. The bread tin has a clip for the carrying handle, so it will stay out of the way while you’re emptying out your loaf. This is something I’ve been crying out for: with most bread maker models, keeping the handle from snagging on your loaf is a fiddly business.
The Fastbake comes with a couple of measuring spoons and a measuring cup, so you’re ready to get going straight away. Like the bread maker, the manual isn’t a thing of beauty, but it’s friendly, clear and full of useful information. This is the only bread maker I’ve seen where the wholemeal recipe requires vitamin tablets – you can get these from a chemist if they’re not for sale in your supermarket.
I wasn’t particularly keen on the bread maker’s controls. These are on the front of the machine rather than the top, so you have to bend over to see the buttons and the small display. The wobbly buttons feel aren't the best, but setting up a bake is as easy as selecting the recipe, size, crust and time delay you want, before pressing Start.
There’s a viewing window on top, too, so you can see how your bake is getting on. You’ll need a torch, however, as the baking chamber isn’t illuminated as on the Sage Custom Loaf or Kenwood BM450.
My first bake was a standard white loaf, and this came out beautifully. It was a lovely loaf with a light, fluffy texture; along with the white loaves produced by the Kenwood BM260 and Panasonic SD-ZB2512, this was the best white bread I’d seen.
However, wholemeal bread was a bit of a disaster. The first loaf collapsed at the top, and even when I changed to more expensive Allinsons Very Strong wholemeal flour, the loaf came out squat, dense and chewy.
As suggested by its model name and the large logo on the front, this bread maker has a fastbake function. This can make a white loaf in just 58 minutes, but the results are a bit of a disaster. The resulting loaf was underbaked, doughy and not pleasant to eat. The machine takes 2h 53m to make an excellent white loaf, which is well worth the wait. If you’ll regularly need to make bread in a hurry, you should look at the Kenwood BM260, which can make a decent loaf in an hour and a half.
The Morphy Richards Fastbake Cooltouch has one outstanding strength, and that is the excellent quality of the white bread it can produce. If that’s what you want, and you don’t fancy spending many times its current price on Panasonic’s SD-ZB2512, this is the bread maker for you. However, I didn’t manage to get a decent wholemeal loaf out of the machine, and I’m not keen on the bread maker’s looks or controls. That said, if you're looking for a cheap bread maker for white loaves this is a great buy for £45.
Click Here To Read More About Morphy Richards 48280 Fastbake Breadmaker - White
4. Kenwood Bread Machine BM450 review
A huge, programmable breadmaker, but its controls and recipes can be fiddly
Whereas the Kenwood BM260 is compact and understated, the BM450 is flashy and huge. It’s big in every direction, so you’ll need a substantial worktop if you want the bread maker to be out all the time.
It looks good, thanks to its smart metal sides, chromed lid handle and reflective black glass top. There’s an automatic fruit and nut dispenser to add extra ingredients at the correct point in the baking cycle, and you can program up to five custom programs yourself. This means you can get your perfect loaf by setting the amount of time dedicated to each part of the baking cycle, such as pre-heat, kneading, rising and baking, and save it as a favourite program.
Unfortunately, while the BM450’s touch panel may look good, the buttons aren’t particularly easy to use; I often had to stab at a button a couple of times to make it register. The LCD display gives you all the info you need about what program and bread size you’re selecting and where you are in the baking cycle, but I found it hard to read.~
I’ve seen a few bread makers with viewing windows, but this is one of the few, along with the Sage Custom Loaf, that has a light for the baking chamber. This lets you see how your loaf is getting on at each stage in the process, but the viewing window is much more restricted than on the the Sage model.
Like the Kenwood BM260, the BM450 has simpler recipes, such as the standard white and wholemeal loaves, in the instruction booklet, and more complex ones in a glossy magazine. The BM450’s wholemeal recipe is far more involved; you have to mix one egg and one yolk with water, and the recipe requires lemon juice and honey, too. Compared to other bread makers I’ve seen, putting together a wholemeal loaf is a bit of a faff.
The bread maker is rather noisy in operation, but I was impressed with the white loaf it produced. This was not too hard nor too squashy, so was easy to cut, and the texture was even throughout. The loaf was huge, though, so you’ll need a toaster with extra-long slots.
With my standard Tesco bread flour, the wholemeal loaf collapsed at the top, creating an odd horned shape. When I swapped to Allinsons Very Strong wholemeal, I saw a much better loaf (below), evenly risen and baked throughout. It was a little on the dry side, though.
The BM450’s automatic fruit and nut dispenser slots neatly into the top of the lid. The fruit loaf I made with the dispenser came out well, with a good even spread of added ingredients throughout.
The Kenwood BM450 looks great and produces fine white and wholemeal loaves, and serious bakers will appreciate being able to tweak the bread recipes to their liking. I didn’t get on with the fiddly control panel and found the wholemeal recipe overcomplicated, though. Just as we completed this review the price of the BM450 dropped from £170 to £130; if you're willing to spend a little more than that Panasonic’s SD-ZB2512 is a better overall choice, but this is a good buy for the money.
To Learn More About Kenwood BM450 Bread Maker with Ingredients Dispenser Find Here.
