Thursday, November 15, 2007

Best Thing Since Sliced Bread

In the past few weeks I have learned how to make better, tastier bread than I've ever made before. My family like it and are happy to eat it, fresh with butter or toasted for breakfast. But we still weren't not ready to stop buying sliced bread. The kids wouldn't have my bread for their sandwiches at school. I don't blame them - the sandwiches were almost two inches thick. That's a lot of chewing when you just want to finish your packed lunch quickly so you can go out and play.

So today I bought an electric slicing machine from Lakeland. It wasn't cheap, but boy does it do the trick. I sliced a boule of yeasted rye bread I made yesterday and the slices came out thin and even. The kids have had jam sandwiches as an after-school snack, and declare that they're happy to have this bread in their lunch boxes.

I think we've bought our last loaf of Hovis.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

What with sourdough bread, homemade Christmas cake, home-brewed beer, sloe gin and fruit-flavoured brandy, I'm really looking forward to my holiday with you this Christmas. You will let me know how much I enjoyed it when it's time to return to Ireland, won't you, Mel ?

Chile said...

Sounds like you are all set in the food department now, Mel. What will you try your hand at next?!

Anonymous said...

Homemade Pizza maybe?

Joanna said...

Brilliant!

Anonymous said...

The only problem is your electricity consumption will now rise. What you need is a breadboard with dowels rising out of it.

If you want 10mm slices of bread, you use 10mm dowels and space them a knife's edge apart with two rows spaced far enough apart to take a loaf of bread.

You do need a few dowels in each line so you can keep the bread pulled into one line of them, keeping the loaf and slices aligned.

Mind you, I'm currently using our bacon slicer as a bread slicer because I can't use a bread knife - thanks to a hit-run driver who knocked me and the trike over.

donna said...

hope you dont mind me asking - how much was the bread slicer? and where did you get it? i make lots of bread but have the same problem with the kids.i tend to make a lot of the dough into rolls to get around the problem of slicing. do you think it will take long to pay for itself?

Lesley said...

I've looked this slicer up on Lakeland's website and it looks great.

The only problem is that I am worried I might also serve up sliced fingers as well as the bread!

How safe is it to operate?

Does the electric turn the wheel and hand power push the bread along?

I've posted a picture of my bread, made in my rejuvenated machine. The loaves are super, but getting even sliced is my next big challenge!

Melanie Rimmer said...

Donna, it was £30 from Lakeland http://www.lakeland.co.uk/product.aspx/!1236

Lesley, it seems to be safe to use. A plastic guard holds the bread, and your right hand holds the guard and pushes the bread towards the slicer. Your left hand has to hold down the power button throughout the operation, probably just to keep it safely out of the way. It sounds fiddly but it doesn't really require any dexterity to use, and I don't think a left-hander would have any trouble with it (Ed's left handed so I notice this sort of thing).

I think if people were losing digits Kenwood would soon face lots of lawsuits. You could certainly chop off a finger deliberately with it. The same is true of a breadknife. But you'd have to be pretty dumb to cut yourself accidentally. However I always turn off the power and put it away after I use it, in case the kids get curious.

Lesley said...

Thanks for that Info, Mel. My husband looked over my shoulder when I was looking at your site, and decided it might be a good purchase.

Now I'm off to make some yog! I used to make it many years ago, with a wide necked thermos, so Ill try that again for the first attempt.

I love plain yog on my morning special K (with red berries)

Um Naief said...

i have an electric bread maker but have only used it once in the States. living in bahrain, i don't find the stuff to make it... what do you use? do you do everything by scratch?

if so, where do you find your recipes? tips you have in making such?

i love fresh bread. i agree w/ you on eating it w/ butter or for toast... so good.

Melanie Rimmer said...

I don't do everything by scratch, Um Naief, but I like to do some things. Recently I've been playing around with making sourdough bread (it's leavened with wild yeast instead of packets of dried or fresh shop-bought yeast). Search this blog for "sourdough" to read about my adventures.

I have lots of sources of recipes - I have two shelves in the kitchen filled with recipe books, I somtimes try recipes I find on the internet, I have recipes handed down through the family, ánd I "make it up as I go along" and awful lot. In fact it's very rare I follow a recipe to the letter, unless it's a tricky recipe and I've never made it before. I publish recipes on here from time to time, if they're original or handed down through the family, or so altered from the published version that it's as good as original. Click on the "recipes" tag in the right-hand sidebar to find them.

Chile said...

I was just thinking along those lines this morning, Mel. Hubby didn't like the last batch of ginger beer so I wanted to use it for bread but not gingerbread this time. I found an apple bread recipe and started it with heavy substituting going on. It eventually morphed into delicious cinnamon rolls with apple bits!

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