bundy

My parents have a breadmaker and they've fallen in love with the thing. My dad is somewhat obsessive about his bread and refuses to eat the packaged plastic bread. When they moved to Jersey, away from his favoured bakery, they got the breadmaker and haven't looked back. Takes him about 2 minutes to shove the stuff in the maker, hour and a half to cook. Puts it on timer so they wake up to the smell of freshly cooked bread. Lovely.

When in Oz, living on a sheep station, I used to make enormous dampers every day, to feed the hoardes. It was a cheat's recipe - just flour, yeast, a little salt, a little sugar, but it tasted great and made the best toast.

tiredwithtwins

we nearly bought a yoghurt maker here in the uk - until we saw the price, then we just carried on using the thermos flask !!!

sue

Simone

Damper's great! I still make it sometimes!
When living in a small aboriginal community near Broome, we went to beach once with school and made damper in the sand. Cool!
I think that was my first experience with it.
Love it with butter and jam. Traditionaly eaten with Golden Syrup, right?

bundy

Yep...although jam is more common in my experience. I used to make these vast vats of pumpkin soup and the damper was great dunked in that. We tried making it over here, but it just wasn't the same - I used to cook the loaves up in camp-ovens.

Simone

Yeah, seen jam more often too.
Pumkin is great too. Can't find it here. Well maybe at an expensive fruit and veg shop.
Also no sweet potatoes here either, looking forward to that again too.

bundy

I can get hold of pumpkin and sweet potato over here, but it's ridiculously expensive. I'm forever having to tell the check out person what a sweet potato is...

Not quite the same as going down to the pumpkin patch and hacking off your own, which is what I used to do when making soup.

Simone

When we lived up north we also had a vege patch with pumpkins and tomatoes I think.

And in the other place up north (near Broome) there was a market garden, and we got HUGE watermelons and rockmelons all the time. So now I don't like watermelons anymore.
We also got heaps of salmon and shark to eat!
And down south we had a walnut tree, orange trees, and nectarine trees. Oh, and a Gooseberry and pepper tree.
Wow, what a difference to up here hey!

Nearly nobody in Holland knows what a sweet potato is. I don't think I'll get them even if I look hard. Maybe in Amsterdam, but that's 1 1/2 hours!

bundy

Yep, it's the fresh veg that I miss (not that it isn't possible to grow fresh veg over here, but not in our flat!). I used to stroll out to the veg garden, pull a few things up, move round to the herb garden and grab some herbs, go back to the kitchen, wash it all in pure rain water and cook it up to accompany meat from the station's own supply. It's just not the same over here!!!

Megalania

Wheat ~$200 / tonne = $0.20 / kg.

0.75 kg bread loaf contains 0.5 kg wheat = $0.10 / loaf.

OzTennis

Yeah, and why did a pot of tea for one (no milk or sugar, one teabag, enough water to fill a small cup one and a half times) cost me £1.50 (more than the price of an Aussie loaf) on Sunday?


OzTennis

Megalania

The price of tea in India: Rs 41 / kg = $A 1.50 / kg.

1 kg = ~500 cups tea (250 ml), 1 cup = $A 1.50 / 500 = $0.003 / cup.

MrsDagboy

Megs, you are full of the most interesting information .

Clare, I agree with Podgy, try Bakers delight, they have excellent bread & it keeps reasonably well. Im a bread Nazi unfortunately (just ask Dagboy ) so Im pretty fussy about freshness of bread etc. My other suggestion is to try one of your local bakeries. We have one just up the road from us that makes the most INCREDIBLY fresh breads & it stays fresh for days, its sometimes worth trying a few in your area to see if theres a good one nearby. thats one thing I noticed in the UK, you could hardly EVER find small bakeries that sold bread & cakes & pies & buns etc, in Oz they are everywhere! Also agree with whoever mentioned keeping it in the fridge in the hot weather, we get through ours fairly quickly, but if its just you then it will keep longer if its refrigerated.

As for the breadmaker, I have one, unfortunately I have experienced what you mentioned ie yeasty/heavy/unappetising loaves. Normally a pretty good cook, but Ive come up blank on the bread making even using prepackaged mixes. If anyone has any good recipes please pass them on

bozzy's

Hi Top Cat

We bought a breadmaker out here with the idea it would be cheeper and we would never run out.

It smelt gorgeous as it was baking and tasted delicious when done. The real chalenge was cutting the bloody thing. We bought one of those slice guid devices but it still didn't work. we wasted more than we used through it being too thick or too thin.

Thats just my experience though

Andrea

OzTennis

I knew you would come in with some 'agricultural' stats Megs

Bloody galling it was when I thought - tea bag (peppermint) 3p at retail, less than 1p at cost; water less than 1p, electricity for kettle or urn less than 1p to boil my bit of water. So of course, staff wages, council rates, rent, etc, etc and profit margin took up more than 95% of the final price (with the emphasis on the latter). Restaurants and tea rooms will tell you of course that drink is where they make a lot of their profit and it subsidises meals to keep prices down etc, etc. Bloody galling still. Oh and the thermos and my own tea bag wasn't an option in this situation.

OzTennis

podgypossum

OK..so now i am curious..

What is the best make and model of breamaker? As some people seem to have more success than others maybe its the quality of the equipment


Hello Mrs DB... hows things on posterior reduction (not allowed to be on a diet!!)