Thanks Jeff! The info re. 1 lb. loaves was most helpful. I also
ordered 'The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook', which is (as many
here probably know) manufacturer-agnostic, and gives excellent,
clear, and thorough coverage to the entire topic. (At the time of my
original question the book had not yet arrived.) While the recipes
comprising the main body of the book are for 1.5 or 2-lb. loaves,
there is a section devoted to 'sampler' loaves, which are 1 lb. I'd
not hesitate to just halve any 2-lb. recipe.
The spouse decided, once I had decided that *a* Zoji machine was
going to be 'the one', that we needed the top of their line. We don't
do that with very much stuff in our lives; have made the exception
because we have committed to buying no more bread in bags from the
grocery store.
We've had the machine for about ten days, and I'm in the middle of
Rise 1 of our loaf #2. We made one 1.5 lb. loaf immediately, ate it
for about a week, and used the last 4 slices this morning for French
toast. We're being careful, despite great excitement, because there
are only two of us, and we know SO many who went through a HUGE
'sorcerer's apprentice'-thing with their machines, then burned out on
bread-baking.
My own bread baking background, is that I've been baking yeast bread
for over 30 years. As a result, I'm kind of over the 'ooooh-aaaaah'
of a house filled with bread aromas. I like it, but it's
de-mystified. Spouse asked me in 1998 if I had any interest in a
bread machine, and I said 'nah'. At the time I wasn't ready. But my
hands and wrists have started to bug me a bit, and I decided that if
I'm really going to wear them out on something, I'd rather have a few
more years playing the piano and knitting. Also: day-job. I have no
time to practice for my piano lesson, get enough exercise *and* do
the week's baking every single week.
Initial impressions of the machine are that I'm profoundly happy with
the model we bought: The bread pan is of a substantial gauge. The
machine itself is rock solid, and as nearly silent as anyone with any
understanding of physics could reasonably hope. And the programmable
settings permit *huge* flexibility in the process. I would like to be
able to manually tweak the rise-temps, but that's a quibble. I'll
have no problem just pulling the dough out for a room-temperature (or
refrigerator!) rise. I was concerned about the footprint of such a
large machine on the counter -- but it occupies a small spot that had
been poorly used, and that was unusable as a kneading surface anyway.
Comments on the concept as a whole: I was initially resistant to the
idea of a machine for bread baking, out of fear that I would do as so
many have done -- throw myself in with enthusiasm for a bit, and then
shelve it. I love the hands-on part of baking a nice loaf, but now
love even more that baking by hand can still be a hobby activity, and
will never become a chore. I actively loved how the paddles broke up
the toasted nuts I added during kneading today. I could not have done
that manually without considerable loss of the nutty aromatics that
in the machine were captured by the dough rather than lost to the
air. I don't love the paddle-holes, but that's just another quibble.
I'm glad to live with those if it means I won't be sweeping flour off
the floor and counter every spare waking minute.
Two notes. 1. Because when it comes to experimentation I subscribe to
the 'fail quickly and often'-philosophy, I think the machine is an
AMAZING tool for low-risk recipe development. I don't need every loaf
to be my baby. Some can be lab-rats. (H/t to the OCLC presenter who
clued me in to this insight in a talk several years ago at a
professional meeting.) My time is valuable, and most bread
ingredients are pretty economical in the amounts used for a single loaf.
2. A part of why I feel secure in this, is that I am: a. quite
experienced with yeast baking, so expect *absolute* (i.e. completely
inedible) failure to be rare; and b. wired with a conviction that my
machines are built to serve my processes -- not the other way around.
So after a couple minutes' thought this afternoon about how to deal
with the fact that a recipe I'm trying out of the abovementioned book
is described as 'slow rise', I flipped to the instruction manual's
page on how to program a custom cycle, and made the machine do for me
exactly what I would have done if I were doing the whole thing by hand.
Anyway. This is super long -- sorry about that -- but I hope it's a
little bit useful to someone. If anyone has any questions that can
best be answered by someone who actual has this thing, I would be
happy to try to answer. (More briefly!)
Cheers -
Mary