Morphy Richards 48300

As a hand baker, I think the Morphy Richards 48300 over kneads the dough, the kneading could be cut by a third making a more balanced texture. Other than that an OK breadmachine.

This is the only breadmaker I have owned. prior to buying it I watched one other in use and did about a month of light research. I decided I wanted a normal shape loaf and fan assisted baking. I expected to leave the machine sitting on a work surface and wanted to limit the space it used up. I only use it to make bread; Pizza dough and jam gets prepared with multi purpose equipment.

The book warns you not to mess with recipe quantities but mixing flours and trying different oils etc. can fine tune bread to your taste. We now have our own choice of daily bread which has given the breadmaker the same status as the kettle in the kitchen. Measuring ingredients is the fiddly and potentially messy part of the job.

Our loaf now has home produced plastic containers cut down to size for each ingredient so that loading a loaf takes 5 minutes. Unloading the baked result also takes 5 minutes. It took an unhurried month to get organised but the process has now run without identified effort for a couple of years.

The choices I made before purchase increased the price but this was not an expensive price for a normal shape loaf machine.

A note on Paddle holes. They vary in size and it is not always possible to say why. I use water that is hot to the touch. The rest of the ingredients seem to absorb the heat before it upsets the yeast and it seems to be right for our loaf. Whatever you do there will always be two paddle holes in the bottom of the loaf. If a sandwich involves a slice cut across a paddle hole in the loaf, try dividing the sandwich north south instead of east west, this improves handling and appearance. The paddle hole problem effects less of the loaf than I thought it would so there will always be enough for the Bishop as well as the vicar on the best china at tea time.

I puchased a reconditioned Morphy Richards model 4830 on E-bay not knowing anything about bread making, after reading the instructions I purchased a wholemeal bread mix from Tesco. My first attempt was highly successful, but the wholemeal bread after a few days goes a little to the heavy side and a bit bland but its ok for toast. I find the white bread much more palletable and lighter. The recipes supplied all work well but you must keep to very accurate measurements to all ingredients. I found the only real way to get the bread out, is to move the kneading blades by turning them slightly to free them a bit, then invert the baking pan and shake it up and down before the bread comes out. You soon learn how to do it, but at first you think it's never going to come out. Overall the machine is excellent and once you start making different breads you can't stop it's great fun, the smell is wonderful and would recommend this machine to anyone.