The bread machine is one of the most misunderstood household appliances. They seem to be getting ever more complicated and expensive, and if our friends are a representative group, they are getting put into storage and never used with the same regularity.
For us, the bread machine is a simple and effective tool that does a couple of things really well, and should be used as such. I think that many people have expectations that a bread machine will actually produce great bread, and quickly become disenchanted.
We use a bread machine to make pre-ferments and dough -- not to make bread. I use it to mix my ingredients, start and hold the dough fermentations, and sometimes to hold the degassed dough. That's it. I do everything else, for bread and pizza, outside the machine.
There are a number of good reasons why it is the perfect tool for this basic task:
You only have to push one button to make really nice dough. You just add your ingredients (wet first), and push start for the dough cycle. The machine heats the water to start the yeast. It mixed the ingredients. It kneads the dough, and it lets it rise in a covered environment. Outside of the bread machine, this task would require mixers, bowls, paddles, spoons, mixing cups, and probably a few more things we haven't thought of.
It's easy to clean. After you have made your dough, you dump the dough on the counter and put the bread machine basket in the sink. It's done.
You do not need to measure the temperature of the water. So many bread or pizza dough recipes start with something like, "add your yeast to 90 degree water and wait for it to become active." That always sounds so hard, it must scare off a lot of people. It gives us visions of running water from the kitchen faucet until it is hot, but not too hot...or too cold. You worry that if the water is too cold, and the bread won't start to ferment until tomorrow, or that it is too hot, and will kill off the yeast altogether (and ruin the bread). With a bread machine, you just throw in ordinary tap water.
You can ignore them. On occasion you will forget your bread for hours or even a day, or you will not get home in time (or at all) to start your baking. The worse that will happen with your bread machine is that the dough will rise, and collapse. We have made some great bread from dough that was completely forgotten and brought back to life from the machine.
They are very flexible. You can stop and restart your dough cycle over and over. We have a couple of bread recipes where we add flour and water to a pre-ferment (dough started earlier to extract more flavor from the flour). We just add the ingredients and push the dough button. After while, you can correct the measurements (either more flour or water, or something you might have forgotten), and start again. You can stop the cycle, or just unplug the machine, and start again.
Personally, we think that bread machines make mediocre bread. They force the dough to rush from mixing to baking, and leave a great deal of flavor and bread texture behind. We also don't like the shape or crust they produce.
Still, if you agree with our "right tool for the job" theory, the bread oven is a great success as a dough maker. Perhaps they should call them dough machines. Or perhaps, someone will see the opportunity, and create a nice full-service automatic dough mixer, with a few bells and whistles. Until that happens, I am happy with my dough machine.
James Bairey, a former Silicon Valley marketing executive, is CEO of Forno Bravo, LLC, a supplier of Italian Wood-Fired Pizza Ovens and Brick Pizza Ovens and Italian Pizza Ingredients for home owners, restaurants, pizzerias and bakeries. He recently returned to his home and vineyard in the California wine country after two years in Florence, Italy.