For context, I have a bread maker that’s been serving us well over the last two years.
It’s a basic Hamilton Beach unit.
A few weeks back, I had leaks through the bottom of the bread pan. At it turns out, the seals wear out and eventually need to be replaced. In my case, the pin that holds the paddle (which kneeds the dough) came right out, so one of the clips must be busted.
Anyway, seeing that this machine is still under warranty, and these “seal kits” seem to be available for quite a few brands and models, I figure it would be an easy resolution.
Well, not really.
The company said they don’t have replacement parts, but they’d be happy to send an entirely new bread machine (different model) if I paid the shipping.
Yeah, no. Shipping costs way more than the part I need (almost half what I paid for the machine!). And it’s environmentally wasteful to replace a machine for such a stupid issue (they wanted me to cut the cord on the old unit before disposing of it).
To make a long story short, I insisted that they only replace the bread basket, which was a much lower cost to ship anyway, and I can keep using my perfectly working machine.
Side quest: I could look for replacement seals for this machine, but apparently, they are pretty model-specific and may not fit if it’s off by even a single mm.
Get some bread pans and some elbow grease.
A stand mixer would be ideal but it’s really not so bad to knead bread by hand.
As much as I love baking and making bread by hand, we use the bread maker (two, actually) so often that the convenience factor alone saves us many, many hours a week and has a much lower energy cost compared to our oven.
That’s fair. Thing I didn’t like about bread makers is you can’t really get a good loaf out of them. It’s good for getting a hunk of bread to put some butter on and that’s great, but not so great for sandwiches. Top doesn’t brown as well
We’ve had excellent results with ours. Admittedly, I also add a lot of homemade “trail mix” to our recipes, so they are more than plain bread loafs! But we also use it to make pizza dough at least once a week.