Why You Need A Bread Maker

A few months ago, we bought a bread maker. It has become my favorite kitchen gadget, and I make multiple loaves every week. Making bread has been fun and healthy. Our toddler loves to help measure out and pour ingredients, which has helped him with his counting skills. We've improved our average slice of bread by packing them full of healthy seeds and grains.

We haven't bought a loaf of bread from the store since the bread maker entered our lives, and there's no going back for us. We can confidently say: you should buy a bread maker and start making your own bread.

Reasons to Make Your Own Bread

You Control The Ingredients: When you're buying premade bread from the grocery store, you're beholden to the decisions of a bread company or bakery. While many bread brands choose great ingredients like organic flour, seeds, and healthy whole grains, most storebought bread also is loaded with preservatives and oils. There's a practical reason for a lot of this— their bread needs to be shelf-stable for many weeks to make it from the factory to your pantry. You, however, don't need any of those ingredients when you're baking at home. You can simplify down to only a few ingredients (for example— sourdough starter, water, organic flour, and yeast) and get a delicious loaf of bread.

In addition to eliminating ingredients, you also have the opportunity to add as many ingredients as you'd like. We like to make a protein-packed whole wheat bread with a scoop of almond flour, oats, and hemp, chia, and flax seeds. You can cater your everyday bread to fit your dietary needs and wants in a way that storebought, mass-produced bread cannot.

Eat the Freshest Bread Ever: As we said above, homemade bread isn't loaded with preservatives, and it isn't spending days in transit to get to your plate. Typically, we're slicing into a fresh loaf as soon as it's cool enough to handle. The reason being that there are few things on this earth better than a warm slice of fresh bread. Once you're eating crusty, warm sourdough right out of the bread maker, you'll never want to go back again. 

Take Pride In Your Food: Breadmaking is an exciting process. You take a bowl full of water and ground up flour and hours later have a beautiful loaf of bread. Even if a bread maker simplifies the process and eliminates hand-kneading, there's still a sense of ownership and pride when you're able to serve a homemade panini or slice of French toast to your family. Bread is an unpredictable process too, where loaves tend to rise at different rates, split, and take on a unique shape each time you bake one. You never really know what you're going to get when you hit start on the bread maker, so seeing it come together perfectly is satisfying in a way that can't be matched by a process like searing a steak or baking a potato.

Bring Restaurant Specialties Home:  There are a number of foods we get accustomed to not having at home. That fancy loaf of sourdough with oil and herbs to dip in seemed like something you'd only get on a night out until we got the bread maker. Now, we have a sourdough starter in the pantry and a delicious slice of bread with dinner is just a little bit of prep work and 3 hours in the bread maker away.

The Secrets of Sourdough

When you're ready for the advanced levels of baking bread, it's time to get a sourdough starter. Sourdough bread is tasty, but it's also healthier than your average bread loaf. The reason for this is one of our favorite bits of food magic: fermentation. An active sourdough starter is constantly going through a process of fermentation, and has many benefits similar to other fermented foods like kimchi and sourkraut.

Sourdough fermentation breaks down complex carbohydrates in bread, which makes it easier to digest. It also helps digestion thanks to prebiotics, which help nourish gut bacteria. Like other fermented foods, sourdough also contains antioxidants. Antioxidants are crucial to a healthy diet and help prevent cell damage.

All of these good things come with a little work, though. Sourdough requires consistent attention to keep the fermentation process active. This means "feeding" it once or twice a day by adding more water and flour. This gives the yeast and bacteria in the sourdough fuel to continue to function and produce the acids and carbon dioxide necessary to make bread. If you don't, your sourdough will die and you'll need to get another starter or make one from scratch.

Speaking of that: there are guides to making a starter at home. However, if that seems like a bit of a tall order, see if a friend or family member has an active starter they could split with you, or ask a local bakery. Many bakeries will sell you some of their excess starter, or even give it to you for free (we got our starter for free at our local Great Harvest Bread).

Making Bread At Home

Making bread is a way to reconnect to your food, improve the nutritional value of your food, and a great hobby. The great part about using a bread maker has been the simplicity of it all. We pour the ingredients into the loaf pan, set the timer, hit start, and walk away. Two or three hours later, we get a perfect loaf of bread that has risen to perfection with a beautiful crust.

Of course, it is possible to make bread without a fancy kitchen gadget. One could even argue it's more rewarding to do it the old-fashioned way.It is a lot more time-consuming, though. The process of kneading dough and letting it rise has a lot of room for error when done by hand, and can even have variance due to time of day or the weather outside. All of that isn't a factor with the bread maker. It's still worth it to make bread at home even without a new kitchen gadget, but the bread maker is the factor that made it feasible to bake bread multiple times a week with our busy schedule.

If you're taking the plunge into baking bread and are looking for some recipe inspiration, check out this recipe for a tasty veggie panini.