A bread maker takes care of all the preparation steps required to make a tasty loaf of bread.

Inside the bread maker, you'll find a specially coated metal mold and one or two dough hooks that are responsible for making the dough.

Your task is simply to put the ingredients for your bread into the metal mold of the machine, select the appropriate program and start it.

The machine kneads the dough on its own, observes resting times and bakes the bread until it is ready to eat. Inside the housing, outside the baking pan, there are several heating coils that bring the bread maker to the desired temperature during the baking process and with the help of a temperature sensor.

Most bread makers can do much more than just bake bread, so you can also use them to make pizza, pasta or cake dough.

Some machines even allow you to make the following treats:

• Dough for bagels, rolls, pretzels or croissants.
• Dough for biscuits or tea cakes.
• Jam and sweet jellies.
• Yoghurt.
• Ice cream.

What you can make with your machine depends on the model, the features and the manufacturer.

Depending on the model and manufacturer of the breadmaker, there is a certain order for adding ingredients.

While with some devices you first add all dry ingredients such as flour or dry yeast to the baking pan, this order is exactly the opposite with other models. With these bread makers, you are advised to put all the liquid ingredients into the baking pan first.

The different order of filling the baking pan with ingredients is due to the separation of the liquid and dry ingredients inside the pan. This is necessary to achieve the desired result when mixing and kneading the dough.

This depends on what you want to bake, the preparation process and the features of your machine.

Most bread makers allow you to select different programs that require different amounts of time. You can see the production time on the display of the machine after selecting a program.

In general, the fluffier and lighter the bread, the shorter the baking time. The size and weight of the bread therefore play a decisive role in the baking time. Some types of flour require longer kneading, while other recipes allow you to select quick programs with a shorter baking time.

Many models allow you to program the baking process individually. To do this, you select the desired end time when the bread should be ready.

The bread maker is very compact, which results in lower power consumption compared to an oven. These food processors are still considered energy efficient for the following reasons:

• No long heating time, because the desired baking temperature is reached quickly.
• Once the temperature is reached, it remains inside the sealed appliance so that reheating is rarely necessary.
• The bread maker only needs 600 to 850 watts for its function.

To find out the power consumption of your bread maker, you should first look into the manual. Depending on the manufacturer, you will find information about the power consumption of the different programs.

If there is no information in the manual, you can easily determine the power consumption with an energy meter. All you have to do is plug the energy meter between the socket and the plug.