What is the hardest part of baking bread? Preparing dough? Mixing the ingredients? Setting the perfect baking temperature and time? Whatever baking step you find tiring, there’s a unique type of machine for making the job easier.
So, all you need to do is to find a kitchen appliance as per your needs! However, while searching for a handy appliance to bake homemade bread, you’ll encounter two major options; the bread machine vs the stand mixer.
Both these machines can prove to be quite helpful to turn a chore of hours into a few minutes. Nevertheless, being on a tight budget, choosing one appliance out of these two options can be quite difficult. Thus, to help you out in this process, here we’ve penned down our bread machine vs stand mixer debate. Go through the article and we promise that by the end, you’d exit the page with all the right answers!
Bread Machine
What is a bread machine and how does it work?
The bread machine consists of a baking pan, a viewing window, and kneading paddles. It handles everything from mixing the raw ingredients, kneading the dough, setting the temperature, and letting it bake for the perfect time. All in all, with a bread machine, all the input you need to provide is adding the raw ingredients, closing the door, and pressing the buttons. After a couple of minutes, you get your quality bread, of the same crispiness and taste standard as you like.
Features of bread machines
Some advanced bread machines are coming with wider baking options to meet the needs of every bread baking enthusiast. For example, you can select which type of bread you want to bake; whether it should be white or basic, gluten-free, french or Italian, etc.
Not only can you select the type of bread but you can also specify which kind of crust you want. For this, multiple crust options like thin, medium, thick, light, and dark, are provided to choose from so you can customize the whole baking procedure as per your style and preferences.
Aside from the type of bread and crust, you can also choose how big or how small bread you want to bake. For instance, if you live all alone or with one or two people, you can get a machine having the capacity to support 1-1.5lbs so you can have freshly baked loaves and don’t have to eat leftovers the next day. On the other hand, if you have a huge family, with lots of members, you can get a bread machine big enough to support up to 2.5-3lbs.
Why should you use a bread machine?
The first and most highlighted advantage of using a bread machine is that it saves time and energy since you don’t have to give in any input literally. Just throw the ingredients into the mixing tub and get back to more important stuff without any worry since this kitchen robot can tackle everything.
Another advantage of using a bread machine is that it doesn’t require any expert supervision to operate. Even if you haven’t baked any loaf in your entire life, you can bake a standard one with this easy-to-use machine since it’s all about measuring the ingredients and pressing a few keys. You might be surprised to know that the applications of this machine are not limited to bread baking only. Instead, you can use the same appliance for making a variety of food like a casserole, cake, sauces, and dough for pie and pizza.
Stand mixer
What is a stand mixer and how does it work?
Stand mixers, unlike bread machines, do not handle the whole baking process, from steps A-Z. Instead, it helps you only with a single step which is mixing the raw ingredients and kneading the dough. So, if you are a baker who finds the kneading and mixing process strenuous, you should get a stand mixer.
To use a stand mixer, you just need to measure the raw ingredients and put them inside the mixer’s bowl. After this, set the timer and press the power button to get started. Some outdated stand mixers don’t have a timer option so in that case, you have to keep an eye on the clock and turn the machine off after some minutes.
Check this out: Best Meat Slicers
Once the mixer does its job, you need to remove the dough from the mixer and place it inside a container for some time so it can rise, after which, you can bake it. Stand mixers aren’t as efficient as bread machines but still, they get the more labor-intensive task of kneading dough done in seconds, making the whole process way more effortless.
Why should you use a stand mixer?
Although a stand mixer can’t outperform the bread maker, it is still quite a useful and amazing tool when it comes to versatility. For example, the mixer can be used to make a wide range of food items including cinnamon rolls, cookies, pasta, and whipping sauce and cream.
To the strong motor of the mixer, you can attach a wide range of attachments like a blender, juicer, whisker, and food processor to perform multiple sorts of cooking tasks. Likewise, you can knead the dough for many bread loaves at a time. Looking for Best Immersion Blender
Bread machine vs stand mixer
By now, you’ve learned everything about how bread machines and stand mixers work. By comparing the features and working mechanisms of both these appliances, we’ve concluded according to which
