Well, you asked for it - or someone did.
Our Panasonic SD-253 breadmaker has been in near-daily use for eight years, mostly as a mixer but still occasionally for baking. It's served well but is showing its age: the pan and paddle have lost most of their non-stick properties, and the plastic hook that holds the raisin flap closed has broken off and defied my attempts to glue it back.
Panasonic no longer makes this model, and that seems to have affected the availability of parts. In any case, a new pan, paddle and dispenser would probably amount to more than the price of a new machine. So, two questions:
- Should I look for an under-used SD253 to cannibalize for parts...
- ...or just buy a new machine and trust that Panasonic has done a similarly good job of engineering the current model?
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used machines and new spares here
www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1311.R1.TR1.TRC0&_nkw=panasonic+sd+253&_sacat=0&_from=R40
Panasonic are the only machines that work and make good bread all the time IMO
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>>Panasonic are the only machines that work and make good bread all the time IMO
Our well used Kenwood is on its last legs, but it still turns out excellent bread and pizza dough.
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My only non-Panasonic experience was Morphy- Richards which produced excellent breeze blocks!
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My breadmaker is nearly 75 years old and has only needed a replacement hip and a good scrub up every day!
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>>My only non-Panasonic experience
Our first one was the same make and gave the same results. OK for white bread, but not so good for wholemeal.
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You throw your Panasonic SD-253 breadmaker in the bin and you buy this.
www.amazon.co.uk/Paul-Hollywoods-Bread-Hollywood/dp/1408840693
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I remember the pre breadmaker days. Too much like hard work.
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Don't, Z. I've had Mrs Beest cooing over fatboy Hollywood for weeks. I just wish he'd look at the camera rather than whoever is standing just to the right of it. He did encourage me to make a new sourdough culture to replace the one that died when we moved house, which is good; working nicely too, but I still use the bread machine for the initial mix and knead.
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ive been hand bread making for 15 years now.... no spare /new parts required
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>> Don't, Z. I've had Mrs Beest cooing over fatboy Hollywood for weeks.
Imagine how much she will fancy you when you are kneading your dough......
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Yeah, that's another thing. Ruddy amateur bakers. Do my head in they do. Like the twonks who try to make their own blasted beer and wine and then invite you round and expect you to drink the stuff.
Nothing I've ever been asked to chew which was baked in someone's back kitchen has ever tasted anywhere remotely resembling as good as a workaday loaf you can buy in the local Spar shop for £1.50.
They need to be told to stop it and take up gardening or something.
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R*******, you are talking out of your deep fat fryer....
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Humph, I am with you.
Various in my family, including my wife, maintain that they can make homemade wine, beer, bread, other stuff and then spout enthusiastically about its quality.
Well good luck to them, but it tastes nasty to me (sorry Dear)
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They need telling Mark. Too many people fear giving offence when asked to sample these things. Heartless maybe but ultimately kinder in the long run to say, "look, it's bogging ok?"
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>> "look, it's bogging
>> ok?"
Sorry Humph, next time you come round I promise to have some oil in the deep fat fryer, and a supply of mars bars in.
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>>Too many people fear giving offence when asked to sample these things
Humph, it may surprise you to know but this is not one of my Top 10 fears.
I tell it like it is (i.e. nasty), but they don't listen, they just assume that I'm misguided. (Except in the case of my wife who cheats by mistreating me until I "admit" I love it).
But honestly, I lived with my Grandfather's home-brew for years. Bless the old chap he used to maintain that he had a secret recipe. But much as I loved him the beer was truly truly nasty.
On occasion I used to try to tell him, but I might as well have spoken martian to a wall.
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>> They need telling Mark. Too many people fear giving offence when asked to sample these
>> things. Heartless maybe but ultimately kinder in the long run to say, "look, it's bogging
>> ok?"
I gave some of my bread to my pal down the other end, and he was very keen for me to supply it regularly.
Perhaps he was being excessively kind, though I gave him plenty of opportunity to backtrack. That was a month ago and I am still doing it. He gets expensive bread (£2 for a large loaf/dozen rolls, £1 for a small loaf/half dozen), and I get a very poor hourly rate :-)
Last edited by: Manatee on Fri 26 Apr 13 at 20:22
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Manatee your bread may be great for all I know, but my wife's is heavy, tastes weird and goes stale quickly.
Other people may make great beer, but my experience of home-made beer is that it tastes tangy, weird and gives me stomach ache.
I cannot even bring myself to write about homemade wine.
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My home made beer is vile, so bad it scares the dog, my home made wine makes WD40 taste like nectar, but my bread is fantastic. Light, fluffy, tasty, crusty and keeps nearly for a week.
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My bread is 100% wholewheat made without any sugar or butter, it's so dense I used a dozen loaves instead of sandbags when we had the floods down here a phew months ago.
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We make our own bread and wine but would never think of putting either in front of a friend, neighbour or relative.
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"Like the twonks who try to make their own blasted beer and wine and then invite you round and expect you to drink the stuff. "
Ah - you must have been round my cousin's. Invited to dinner I took a perfectly pleasant bottle of claret as a gift but we were offered his latest "fruits of the hedgerow' wine to accompany the meal. Truly truly awful.
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The other odd thing I've noticed about these people is their penchant for Christmas pullovers.
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You may get, and probably do get better focaccia from an Italian delicatessen, but the product of my breadmaker in dough mode and my finishing touches and gas cooker makes a far better one than is available in supermarkets.
The use of good 'unimproved'* flour helps to a great extent, but there is an element of taste too. If you like your flour to have ascorbic acid and your bread made with steam, go to Tesco etc.
Improved flour contains ascorbic acid (vitamin C) to make the dough rise faster. Wreaks the taste though...
Steam baking - google the Chorleywood process
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There's more to steam than Chorleywood. With my loaves, a tray of water at the bottom of the oven gives them a springier crumb and a thinner, sweeter crust.
No ascorbic acid, although the Panasonic recipe book recommends it. And in my regular yeast (rather than sourdough) loaves, 150g of natural yogurt in place of the same amount of water; I think the protein helps form a good gluten structure, and it doesn't affect the flavour.
It's not always perfect, and occasionally it doesn't work at all, but when it's good it's as good as anything I've ever bought from a bakery, and miles better than anything from Tesburys.
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ALDI Village Bakery white sliced bread = £0.55 for an 800gm. loaf.
Not great bread but good for toast & occasionally as a cheap white bread, ham sandwich, thing! Does OK as the outer of an HP sauce sandwich, too.
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>>There's more to steam than Chorleywood.
Yup, I was simplifying.
Panasonic cookbook can be altered as you don't need to add sugar with a decent yeast and white flour and obviously I'd not dream of adding ascorbic acid.
Wholemeal flour, dried mixed herbs and olive oil for the fat content makes a good loaf and provided you don't mind slightly more solid bread, will make an acceptable loaf if you lie about the flour and pretend it's white.
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Nothing intrinsically wrong with ascorbic acid - its vitamin c. The Chorleywood process was developed to enable bakers to utilise British flour which unlike North American "strong" flour is low in gluten and would otherwise make a rather dense loaf.
It can be seen therefore in many ways as a rather useful thing, enabling us to eat our own wheat, reducing food miles and imports.
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True at the time, CG, but there's plenty of hard British wheat now, and bread made by SP's method or mine won't stick to the roof of your mouth.
Now, who's cracked (wrong verb) the art of making a convincing soft roll? Mine always come out too crusty.
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>> True at the time, CG, but there's plenty of hard British wheat now, and bread
>> made by SP's method or mine won't stick to the roof of your mouth.
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>> Now, who's cracked (wrong verb) the art of making a convincing soft roll? Mine always
>> come out too crusty.
Tried for a longer time at a lower temperature?
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>> It can be seen therefore in many ways as a rather useful thing, enabling us
>> to eat our own wheat, reducing food miles and imports.
Apart from the fact they now add
Hydrogenated and fractionated fats,
soya flour
oxidant chemicals as a flour improver
reducing agents
emulsifiers
calcium propionate (flour mould killer)
various undeclared enzymes.
Me? I'll stick with the strong canadian flour.
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"Me? I'll stick with the strong canadian flour."
Do you never eat anything but home-made bread? Sounds a bit of a pain.
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>> "Me? I'll stick with the strong canadian flour."
>>
>> Do you never eat anything but home-made bread? Sounds a bit of a pain.
No? I eat fish, flesh, vegetables, dairy. If it swims, flies, walks or grows in the ground I will eat it.
But i seemed to recall you were talking about processed bread made with processed english flour. Or was that not the case?
Last edited by: Zero on Fri 26 Apr 13 at 23:46
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I will re-phrase the question for you.
Since you say you will stick with Canadian Flour there is an implication that you never eat commercially made bread made with English flour. Is this the case?
" a bit of a pain" - think baguette
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>>a bit of a pain" - think baguette
I cee'd it CG, pan in español ... hook, line and sinker ;)
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>> " a bit of a pain" - think baguette
Think French flour. Think lack of additives. And it is possible to make Baguettes at home you know.
I will rephrase my answer for you, English flour and the "factory" chorley wood process does not make good bread.
Last edited by: Zero on Sat 27 Apr 13 at 07:36
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I imagined the main attraction of the Chorleywood process to manufacturers was that it's a continuous rather than a batch process. To judge by the texture of the stuff I also wonder if they get more water in to make the weight up. I know what weight of dry ingredients I use in an 800g loaf. It might be interesting to dessicate a Sunblest and see what that weighs, dried out.
My signature loaf is my oaty bread. 60% wholemeal, 30% white, and 10% porridge oats. I use mainly Allinsons "very strong" flours. Not sure where it comes from.
Last edited by: Manatee on Sat 27 Apr 13 at 08:26
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The bag of Allinson's Very Strong in my cupboard says it's made from 'British wheat wherever possible', then goes on to say it's from around the Allinson's mill in Hertfordshire. No guarantees in that, of course.
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>> I will rephrase my answer for you, English flour and the "factory" chorley wood process
>> does not make good bread.
That's as maybe but do you ever eat it was the question.
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I inherited a well-used (April '05) SD253 in spring last year when my dear old uncle Eric passed away and I've only bought one loaf since - and that was only because we needed a thin-sliced one. From reading past reviews, Panasonic are by far the best bread machines and the SD253 was a particularly well-thought-of model.
Unfortunately, time and heavy use has bought about the same faults as yours, Will; the paddle lost its non-stick (though the bucket has remained largely OK) and the plastic catch in the raisin dispenser has similarly defied all attempts to mend it. I bought a replacement paddle from L M Electrical on E-bay - and it has made a great difference; no longer does the paddle hang on to a large chunk of bread. I've taken the raisin dispenser out altogether and when I make a spiced fruit loaf (mmmmm!) I just add the fruit and mixed spice after 52 minutes (i.e. when I hear the click as it performs the vestigial action of opening the trapdoor).
I too am keeping an eye open for a little-used replacement, though they seem to go for a fairly high price on e-bay and none seem to crop up in East Anglia. I would hope to use it as it comes, not cannibalise it, as the chances are that it would be in all-round better condition than my old one. I would use my old one as a possible source of spares. I'm afraid that when I start replacing bits on a well-used machine (as on our old Sebo vacuum cleaner), a further worn-link of the chain is exposed - as on 'Trigger's broom'.
Sooner or later, we will have to replace it and I would not consider any make other than Panasonic. My wife swears by Lakeland so we will probably wait until there's a special offer on one of the new models.
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Breadmaker spares - Meldrew
