Hehe; that really made me chuckle.
You can get some great bread here, but I’m not really into the stuff… Too long in Taiwan.
Made it by hand in Taiwan, sometimes, but it was never much good. Oven not hot enough, I suspect, or mebbe not kneaded enough.
Cool, I should have looked at that one first I guess. This seems to work pretty good though, what the hell, panasonic a pretty good brand.
Well, it’s bread, but it’s not like a normal loaf as the crust is different. You only get a small piece of soft crust on the top while the other sides of the bread has more like the hard bottom crust you get when you make your own bread in a bread tin. I guess it’s ok for toast or something like that, but it’s not like you get a nice soft crust, even if you set it to the light crust setting. Of course, as I said, the more “modern” models are meant to reduce this issue by having a wider loaf tin with two kneading paddles. This makes for more soft top crust and less of the side crust. I mean, what do you expect when the tin is deeper than wide? I’ve managed to make some decent bread from time to time, but it doesn’t always come out great. Sometimes I get really solid bread and at other times it’s really nice and fluffy, yet I don’t seem to have done anything different. I mean, it’s not much you can do wrong, add the ingredients, press a couple of buttons and wait… :loco:
Maybe it’s just the Taiwanese weather 
After trying both breadmakers and a mixer with bread hook followed by manual kneading, I prefer the results of the latter.
I just usually shove a pile of flour on a board, make a hole in the top, add the yeast and water mix, some more warm water, a bit of salt and mix it right there. Takes like 3 minutes or so. Another five minutes of kneading, an hour or two of proving, knock it down, knead for another 5 minutes and stick it in the oven. It would take me much longer to fuck about with a mixer or a bread machine or whatever, plus, you have to wash them after. I just wipe the board and I’m done.
I must say that people with breadmakers make it sound TOO easy.
“Yea . . . you just throw the ingredients in the top. Done!” 
I don’t believe it.
But where does the clay flower pot come in?
I’ve seen cakes baked in flower pots (ready to eat) but I’ve always wondered how safe that would be (is there anything in the clay of the pot itself that would make it unsafe for food? how about heat?)
TheLostSwede,
We got our Italian-made oven on yahoo auction for 15,000 (new). If you keep an eye out you can get some good deals.
I’ve made French bread and Hot Cross Buns so far. I’m still searching for a good recipe for healthy bread kids will like to eat. Oh and we have cooked a couple of pizzas too, do they count?
Wow, that’s a great price. I was considering getting the portable thingie in Costco, anyone got that one? It’s like NT$8,500, but a real oven for 15k is a steal here.
The baking machine I have really is easy to use, at least I think so. You do have to warm the liquid up though, but apart from that, it’s dead simple. And the washing up ain’t all that bad, it’s a bread tin and a kneading hook.
Try taking your favorite recipe and mixing just a wee bit of whole wheat flour, wheat bran and maybe even oats in, so little that they won’t notice, then very gradually increase it each time so they get used to it.
Mollycoddling! Do a Jamie Oliver on them!!!
Actually, half-and-half stoneground wholemeal and decent white flour is a very good combination. Not too heavy, but still with a fair bit of that lovely nutty wholewheatiness.
What? Do who? No thanks.
Ha, and then cover it with a thick layer of chocolate… 
You must have seen the Jamie Oliver programmes where he gets poorly nourished, junk food-addicted city kids to eat and really appreciate good healthy hearty fare?
I never used to like his regular cookery programs. But the school dinners ones are great. And he’s really made a difference. A lot more school dinners are healthier now than they were a few years ago.
Anyway, your little-by-little approach makes sense for really fussy kids. At least it’s not the kind of bribery involved in chocolate flavoured carrots.
I actually have Jamie Oliver’s Family Dinners cookbook, and have been using it. But the more successful one is by an Australian chef Donna Hay called “From the Pantry”. I think the kids like that because a lot of the recipes are Asian-style, which they are more used to.
Back to bread, I was actually wondering if anyone has a good recipe for baking bread with nuts and raisins etc in, in the oven? I’m trying to get my two-year-old daughter off her chocolate donut obsession.
GRRR! JAMIE OLIVER IS EVIL*!
I ate healthy hearty fare as a child because I’d have got a slap on the back of the legs if I’d offered an unsolicited opinion on the menu. Or, you could gradually sneak oats into your kids’ home baked bread…
His restaurant’s really nice though…
Yeah, I was just teasing. 
I don’t watch much TV, but yeah, I have caught a very brief glimpse of both his regular and school dinner shows. I don’t have any opinion on the former since I don’t watch regular cookery programs, as I’m on a diet (they make me too hungry) and I prefer printed recipes (the info stays on the page, and I don’t really need to see the visuals to know what’s going on with a recipe, although I realize that can be valuable for the novice as well as the novel). The school dinner programs sounded like a great idea, trying to teach kids that healthy food can be delicious too. It’s a lesson most adults could learn from. It’s good to hear he’s having an influence.
I think the little by little approach will be good for converting the spoiled. But if you accustom them to the healthy stuff from the beginning, you’re doing even better. When I served dishes heavy on cream or cheese to Dragonbabe, she really turned her nose up at them as too heavy, too rich. The fact is, they were, but since I’d been raised on them they were delicious to me; since she’d been raised on leaner, healthier food from the outset, she knew it was unhealthy instinctively.
As for breads with raisins, nuts etc. to replace donuts, why not just take your favorite basic, healthy part-whole-wheat recipe and try adding some raisins and nuts to it, with maybe a tablespoon or two of brown sugar, a couple tablespoons of olive oil and half a teaspoon of cinnamon? Experiment. I add the oil and sugar only because you want to wean them off the donut crap. Later you can reduce those and eventually eliminate them (although olive oil is quite healthy, so you could keep it).
Pray tell! What’s it like?
Nah, they were an expensive disaster, and led to a lower uptake of school meals for some of the poorest kids in the UK. It was a scandal.
Then he had the cheek to follow it up with ‘Ministry of Food’.
Loads of info there for the googling; I don’t want to start off on my ‘Jamie is evil rant’; I should do some work…
He’s having a hard time bouncing back from all the negative publicity and his book sales have gone through the floor.
‘Rustic home-cooked Italian.’
Oh, the olives… The olives. £8.95 a bowl. Green olives. I almost wept at how good they were. One day I will go back and simply order sixteen bowls of olives. Never before have I tasted such olives. Sausage papardelle! I never ever order pasta in restaurants because I don’t want to pay for something I can cook better myself in 15 mins, but Jamie did not disappoint. Prawn linguine, not so divine, but pretty amazing. Plates of cheese and ham, also not too shabby; lots of Serrano, prosciutto, Parma, etc.
Good wine, but I can’t remember what it was. No dessert.