Home bakery

Sounds wonderful!

Whoa! More feature inflation. Get a simple one that does 99% of all of that for half the price, or less. I am sure that rye bread can be done on a regular machine.

What is it with Japan that vacuum cleaners have to cost 1000 dollars and rice cookers are 500 bucks? That has got to end. These products are NOT that good, and adding more features does not make them better.

I agree! Why do I need a home bakery machine that bakes bread, turns on the T.V., wakes me in the morning, plays music, controls the lights in my apartment, etc. I just want to bake bread. Its very similar to the mobile phone industry. Why must I have a phone that's a MP3 player, accesses the internet, etc. I just want to make simple telephone calls. Oh yeah, and the phone has a price tag of $500 for all the options I don't really want, and I must pay extra for the AC adapter to charge my phone!!! (smile).

er....Because this Japan? It's always been like this here. If you don't like it then go back to the USA or UK, or wherever you are from and keep buying you non-Japanese appliances that break down with alarming regularity. Before anyone argues with me, I will take Dyson vacuum cleaners out of the equation.

'you can bake French bread with a fresh smelling crust and chewy inside' - they were very careful with their wording here ---fresh smelling crust---I bet it is impossible to get the crust as crunchy as the one you buy from a bakery in Paris.

How can you possibly bake half a loaf? For it to be half a loaf, you have to bake a full one first and then cut it in half.

My cheap Chinese breadmaker can make half sized loaves and loaves with 50% rye with no problem. Klein2 is right.

One of the defining characteristics of what we call French bread is the shape. I am sure the breadmaker does not produce a baguette-shaped loaf.

Foxie, this is for the Japanese market. It will therefore not produce a Paris-style crust, but instead the crust that Japanese people expect, and if the French bread from a bakery is packed in plastic as it so often is in Japan, that means leathery not crisp.

How big is this thing? It doesn't look like it could make a very big loaf.

My Chinese maker which cost less than 25% of this Panasonic wonder has been faithfully been doing all that a couple of times a week for the last year and a half. If I have the time I'll let it do all the kneading cycles for French bread then form the baguettes myself and throw them into the oven which is pre-heated and red hot, closer to French bread you can't get unless you have access to a wood fired brick oven. The staple it produces is a wholewheat/rye bread combo the is to die for.

I am looking into buying a bread-maker in the near future, looking at around the 10.000Yen mark though.

Not interested in french bread though which, IMO, ranks just above Shoku-pan = barely edible.

And I hate when I buy bread at the bakery and they wrap it in plastic, always ask them for paper-bags only. One owner tried to tell me that doing so would make the bread rubbery and it NEEDS to be plastic-bagged. Hah!

These things were popular in America 20 years ago when companies were putting every chemical on the planet into bread. Japan's bread is fairly chemical free. No need to waste your money. Simple waste of money. And completely eco unfriendly.

Man, so much hate out out there....and its only a baking oven.

gameover-- I know, right. Looks cool to me! Can't afford it though, haha.

The bread of these bakery machines taste awful. You have to be really ignorant of what real fresh French bread taste to like that stuff and I would be really concerned about the non-stick coating inside...

Bread is really easy to do : put a extra quality organic flour with clean water and natural starter in your everyday robot, then let the dough raise and bake it gently. Et voilà ! Good home made bread for almost nothing.

Uh. Rainmain. Fail. I bought a breadmaker here in Japan that was just great. It cost less than half of this thing and does everything that this one can do.

I am not talking about foreign makers. I am talking about Japanese producers losing their minds.

I also have some appliances from foreign makers that are better than the Japanese models, but no need to discuss that now.

gaijintraveler. Thanks for the shout out. I make French bread all the time, and it is ok, really. The shape messes up the crust ratio, it is true, but what defines French bread to me is the salt/flour characteristic, so if you get that right, you can get pretty close even without the shape being right. I just grab a hunk and put some cheese on it. Tastes pretty good to me. I am not French, though, so...

Zenny. Keep looking. You might find something in that range. You hit the sweet spot in this market at about 15000 yen, I think. Find the lowest priced model of a good maker and you will be ok.

There are great cookbooks everybody. As far as I know, there is nothing that can't be made in a basic machine. It might take some experimentation, but once you get a recipe nailed, it will always come out ok. I have made all kinds of weird breads. I don't see why rye would be a problem if you get the gluten right. Pumpkin, spinach, honey, sunflower seeds, peanut butter, bananas, apples. It's all good.

What defines French bread are the crisp and the texture. These machines are total failures in these matters.

Bake your own bread old style. You'll save money, skip the cancer non stick coat and eat real good bread at the same time. Whole-bran breads can last several days if you store them correctly. If they don't, just put a bit of water all over the bread and put it the oven for a few minutes until the water has evaporate. The yummy crisp will come back just like the first day.

Uh. @Klein2. My point was that this IS a top end breadmaker. It is expensive and there are plenty of chepaer alternatives out there that are perfectly OK. But believe me when I say that the manafacturer will have done their market research and they will know that there is a market for this. Will I buy one? No. I live close to one of the best french bakeries in Tokyo. I also have an ENGLISH toaster - which was expensive but makes fantastic toast. All down to choice and what you can afford. Seems to be an awful lot of people on this forum who like to criricise something just because it is expensive (not just this topic)

@rainman1 You know what, the "that's the way it is here, go back to your country of origin" is a pretty weak argument, and doesn't really add to the discussion. Maybe you could have provided examples that illustrate you point, rather than to bluntly tell people to get lost. Why didn't you simply state what you wrote in your last post instead of your previous remark? I agree with the other posters though. Just because you buy something expensive doesn't mean it'll last any longer, and vice-versa. There's nothing wrong with just a basic machine either. As for me, my little Sunbeam 5891 does a great job, but without the frills of more expensive machines.

I swear I saw this thing in kojima the other day for round a man and half. At least it looked a lot like that picture, and it was a Panasonic.

I have a breadmaker. I just wish I knew how to make a bread like you buy in the shops.