What small electrical appliances (with moving parts or heaters) do you
frequently use when cooking?  How often do you use them, to cook what, and
what should other people know before acquiring or using them?
For purposes of this discussion, do not count freezers, refrigerators, stoves,
or microwave ovens.  Do count things like toasters, blenders, coffee makers,
spice grinders, bread machines, food processors, ice cream makers, Vitamixes,
electric pressure cookers and frying pans and woks and slow cookers and
grilles (and I am sure I left out a few).  Which of these are now
computerized?

66 responses total.

Item 61 overlaps this but also includes non-electric gadgets.  I found mention
there of things I had never heard along with electric juicer, fryer, can
opener, waffle iron, kettle, knife.  We have tried most of the above and
decided it is easier to use a stove or the non-electric version.  Popcorn
maker gets used regularly, the electric pressure cooker maybe once a year in
hot weather (plugged in outside), electric frying pan if I want to bother
digging it out (holds temperature steady), electric wok ditto.  Easier to use
a frying pan on the stove.  Electric hot plate in hot weather.  Do the
electric versions of things sometimes do a better job than the mechanical
ones?

The bread machine gets used 2-3 times a week.  I think that's about it for
regular use.  I've also got a toaster, a blender (more used in the summer),
a coffee grinder (used for grinding dried hot peppers from the garden), and
a miniature food processor.  The most used gadget is a Bodum coffee press,
which I use for tea.

Grace should really answer this (& maybe will get to it when she has a
chance), but the bread machine gets the workout.  It varies, but she'll often
use it to make two batches of dough (which get put in standard bread pans &
baked in the oven) and sometimes then she lets another loaf bake in the
machine.  (Besides that this way she can get 3 or 4 loaves made without
washing it in between, the oven-baked is better-tasting.)  This happens at
least 2 or 3 times a week, I think, most of the time.  The food processor gets
used occasionally, blender & mixer very rarely.  We use a toaster-oven as a
toaster & occasionally as an oven.

Interesting that you both mention bread machines, as the impetus for this item
was the bread machine I just found for $10 at Kiwanis.  (It may have been
donated because the previous owner never thought to clean out the oven).  Jim
looked at it and laughed - it makes only half a loaf instead of 2-3.  Good
idea about maybe using it just to mix the bread but does it work as well as
hand kneading and is it no harder to clean than a bowl and spoon?  How much
actual work (time spent loading and cleaning up) is it for 2 loaves of bread?
Jim sometimes toasts peanuts or almonds in the toaster oven, or cooks a
squash, but the microwave oven is a bit faster at both.
        Why is the oven baked better tasting?

Right now not much, this house isn't wired for modern usage.  When we get the
wiring and kitchen updated or before we moved here we used a few appliances.
Bread machine 2-3 times a week, ingredients dumped in and put on "dough"
setting which went through first rise and often I would set it back to the
beginning of the cycle for another kneading.  My machine kneads the dough for
about 30 minutes, I can do about 10 on a good day so it gives a much more even
texture.

We use an electric frying pan often.  Coffee mill and coffee pot on weekends
and any day I don't have morning class or work.  Blender mostly for fruit and
milk smoothies a couple of times a month, more often in summer or if STeve
or I do the "Slim Fast" type dieting.  Popcorn popper 2-3 times a month,
toaster 2-3 times a week.  Rice maker 2-5 times a week.  We got a toaster oven
with the house but have yet to use it, have to scrape off all the accumulated
baked on grease that my mother-in-law couldn't get either do to no hot water
here or the fact that her sight was so bad that she just didn't see it.  (May
end up getting rid of it instead of fighting with it.)

I would use the electric frying pan if I could just find the box that the cord
got packed in. 

It would be easier to use electrical appliances here if the only counter space
we have came with outlets.  There isn't even one on that wall of the kitchen!

It sounds like you don't even need a stove, with all those appliances!
You can get another cord for $1 at Kiwanis Sat. 9-12, hardware dept.
And they also have some toaster ovens, pre-cleaned, maybe $5.
Jim fixed a blender but has not found any use for it.  We were going to make
tofu with it (you soak and then blend the beans) but his flour grinder or meat
grinder are easier to use.  He has a food processor that he converted to
process styrofoam cups into wall insulation.  For food, we have a couple of
shredders (to make borshch and potato pancakes once or twice a year).  We have
a Squeezo and a Victoria juicer with apple and grape spirals that go inside
a perforated cone, and the seeds come out the end and the juice out the sides.
What I would like is something easier to use than the hand flour grinder -
some day we will hook it up to an exercise bike.  Can anyone think of a good
design for a bread kneader using the same power source?
That might also be hooked up to the juicers and meat grinder and shredders,
so we could have both hands free to feed things into them.

My kitchen was modernized around 1950 and had three duplex outlets.  We
plugged in the refrigerator and microwave into one, a clock into another, and
a better ceiling light into the third, leaving two outlets for the toaster
oven, radio, outdoor extension cord for the hotplate, electric frying pan,
etc.  Jim added one duplex outlet and I got a stove with an outlet, into which
I plugged another ceiling light.  Then I put a 3-outlet adaptor into it so
we can test boomboxes and get light at the same time.  How many kitchen
outlets would be ideal?

We just tried out a non-electric crank-type corn popper that Jim found at the
curb.  It requires oil, but it makes fluffier popcorn than the electric one,
and does not produce the same burnt smell.  Are there electric appliances that
actually produce better results than hand power, or are they just all more
convenient?

I suspect it's all convenience, time & muscle-energy saved.  I made soap
jelly last week in the blender, using the tiny bits left over from a son's
attempts at soap-carving, and I'm not sure *how* I would have applied
hand power to produce a similar result, but probably it could have been
done.

When I bake the bread-machine's dough, the result is moister & softer.
My texture varies -- for slicing, the machine result holds together better
-- but it's as if the machine overbakes it somewhat.  Our earlier machines
didn't do that so much, and one with adjustments for kind of flour might
do better.

It takes ten minutes at most to collect ingredients and parcel them out at
the beginning of a day's baking (hottish water & honey into the loaf pan, 
dry ingredients into the pan and also into a separate jar for each 
intended subsequent loaf), then start the machine.  About two hours later,
or whenever I notice that the dough is ready thereafter, I grease a loaf
pan, dump out the batter, put in warm water & honey & a jar's contents of
dry ingredients, & restart the machine.

Cleanup is fairly quick if I do it right away, but I'm usually in the middle
of something else, so I pull off the dough hook and half-fill the pan with
water.  Then later cleanup, when all the bits of dough are saturated with
water, goes very quickly (maybe a minute).  I keep a chopstick on the 
sink shelf for getting out any dough from inside the dough hook.

I was wondering how the machine could 'knead' dough and perhaps it has to have
wetter dough to knead it, and then bakes it longer to dry it out?
You could grate your soap by hand, or with one of those crank-type graters
that I have, then add water and wait overnight.  Or possibly just chop it up
a bit with a knife and wait for it to dissolve in water.
I was looking at online bread recipes and for a 1 pound loaf you are supposed
to add 1.5 cups flour, or 2 cups maximum, or 2.5 cups, depending who you
believe, with equally variable amounts of water.  It probably depends on type
of flour, humidity, etc.  The machine insists on being at 65-68 degree but
we cannot oblige it so this experiment may fail.  The main problem when baking
our own bread is finding some place to let it rise.  On top of the furnace
is one option but you have to prop it carefully.  Or in an oven preheated to
150.  How does a bread machine get warm enough to rise the bread, without
killing the yeast while it is preheating?

A bright bread machine cycles the heating element on & off (probably at
a lower power than "bake") to get the right temp. for dough to rise.

Does it actually have a thermostat or is it making assumptions?  If our room
is 50 will the bread still rise?

Mine has a thermostat.  Dunno about yours.

We will take a look.  For $10 we don't expect a lot.  Does your say you have
to have the room at 65-68 degrees?

I should add another appliance that I forgot in my earlier reply, but which
gets a workout in our kitchen: the yogurt maker (that refugee from the 1970s).

Mine's got a thermostat.  The books lists cryptic error messages for its
tiny display for things like "Unable to reach or maintain proper temperature
for rising - use in an area warmer than 55 degrees and keep the machine's
top closed".

That one does not sound very cryptic, to me.

Ours does not have a display.  Jim made bread the usual way yesterday since
he was at his house and the bread machine was at my apartment.  Maybe we will
try it today or tomorrow but we got sidetracked trying to make a 386 board
accept a 486 cpu (it goes in but does not run despite setting jumpers as
instructed).  I have an electric 'natural oven' which means that there is
insulation on the outside of the heating element so it requires very little
heat.  I have used it to bake potatoes, and the metal inner pot can also be
used for boiling things.  I have a long narrow version for baking bread
(probably intented for turkeys).  It takes a while to come to temperature as
it is low wattage compared to a stove.  You can close off the vent hole which
makes bread with a crustier crust.  I have one with a dial thermostat, and
another where you can switch between three heat settings by plugging the plug
in three different ways (four prongs stick out of the oven itself).  This
apparently changes the wattage somehow.

Re:  #16
That's the text that the book gives for when the machine's little
display is "E:02", flashing on & off.

We have a bread machine with the Williams-Sonoma brand name on it, but 
I don't know who the real manufacturer is.  We use it all the time.  We 
also have an electric can-opener, two electric frying pans, and 
electric wok, an electric casserole thingie, an electric carving knife, 
an electric sandwich griller, an off-brand (non-George-Forman) fat-
removing grilling device, a couple of mixers and food-processors, 
a "salad shooter" that I've never figured out, a JuiceMan juice 
extractor, an electric citrus juicer, two coffee makers, an iced tea 
maker, a coffee mill, a small U-Line fridge and a U-Line ice-maker 
under the bar, two microwaves, a Waring blender, and probably other 
things I'm forgetting.  When I started making this list I had no idea 
we had all that stuff.  Some Thoreauvian.

A whole army of electric servants?  We gave away my mother's and grandmothers
electric can opener and knife and waffle iron and mixer.   

The bread machine we have took 2 hours 15 minutes.  It mixed up our flour and
water into not one but two little balls of dough, so I unplugged it and took
the dough out and kneaded it by handed into one big ball.  I then watched it
'kneading', which involves slamming the ball against the side of the pot for
about 20 minutes.  A short rise, then it baked on medium and overbaked.  It
half-filled the pot (possibly because I forgot to put in 85 degree water) and
came out like a very hard slightly burnt roll.  Next time I will try Light.
It was also a lot tougher than hand-made bread and a bit dry.

Which may be the reason that you got it so cheap.  If the dough split into
pieces rather than one big ball you didn't put in enough liquid, which is also
why the bread turned out tough and dry.

The rise time on my machine is 60 minutes.  If yours is shorted than that the
timer may be bad as well.

These are reasons why I don't buy electronics at place like Kiawonas.  I buy
them new from stores with return policies.  Buying used appliances is a bit
like buying used cars.  They can be ok and work fine, but more often then I
like you are just buying someone else's problems that they felt too quilty
about or were too cheap to pay the price of throwing away before they bought
new, working units.

Bread machines always require you to make a few loaves, watching things
and fiddling with the recipe, before they'll do it right automatically.
(Sometimes more than a few loaves...)  The machine has no sense of how
the bread's working out, nor judgement nor ability to make any corrections
as a human baker could.  Once you've got everything right, though, it can
mindless crank out endless consistent good results.  (Somewhat like a 
computer program that way...)

The machine says it is supposed to take 2 hours 15 minutes and it did.
This seems rather short to me but it did what it said it would.
I will try more water, and warmer water.  Since we don't know whether we even
want to own a bread machine, $10 seems like a better amount to risk (they said
I could bring it back if it did not work) than $100 or whatever the new ones
go for.  I think I prefer the hand-kneaded double-rise bread we make but this
was interesting and we will try a few more times to get it better.

If I have time, I let the machine go through the mixing, first kneading and
rising then either take the dough out to hand knead and rise again or restart
the dough cycle to go through the kneading and rising again before hand
shaping and baking.  The only reason I bake in the oven is that most bread
in this house is used for sandwiches and the machine leaves a nice hole in
the bottom of the loaf where the mixing paddle is.  I really don't like it
when the filling falls out.

Jim is making another batch of bread.  2.5 cups flour 7/8 cup water (a bit
more water than before) and warm this time.  He reports that the dough again
formed two balls but after a while they coalesced into one.  Light instead
of medium this time.  What is the most flour a 1 pound bread maker can
actually mix?  We suspect the whole grain flour is not going to rise enough
to fill the pan even with warm water - maybe more yeast is needed because of
the relatively short rise for this machine?  I suppose we could add a bit of
honey to accelerate the process.

Every bread machine recipe i've even seen had some sugary stuff added.

Our friend who makes successful whole wheat bread says his machine has a 3
hour or a 5 hour whole wheat cycle. Ours does not.  He uses 2 1/4 cups flour,
1 cup water (more than we used) and some honey (to speed up yeast
reproduction) and gluten (to make sure it rises higher as the bread machine
probably does not knead as well as hands and kneading develops gluten). He
also said we could take the dough out after kneading, let it rise a few times
in a warm place and bake it in the oven.  By that point we may as well make
a larger recipe and knead it by hand.  I might mix the yeast, water, and honey
half an hour before starting the machine to give them a head start.

Appliance that I think we forgot to mention is the crockpot -- we use it maybe
once a month, to cook my pot roast (no vegetables, just meat).

My mother did hers in the pressure cooker with potatoes and carrots - this
is all she used the pressure cooker for.
We made bread this time with warm water, honey and yeast dissolved in the
water before adding on top of the flour, but no gluten, machine set to Light.
This gave us a full half loaf of unburnt bread.  Is there some reason we
cannot double the flour, or at least use 3 cups and the medium cycle?
Jim thinks the keep warm cycle is so that the bread will not get soggy before
you remember to take it out.

Forgot to mention the crockpot.

Apropos bread machines: Ours has a small vented compartment in which 
you can throw extras such as candied fruit.  We've never used it, but I 
once made the mistake of putting my nose right over the vent slots in 
order to smell that nice rising-bread smell during the rising cycle and 
got a snootful of some weapons-grade yeast gas.  Unbelievably painful.  
What *is* that stuff?

Yeast gas???  Could be CO2 - was the pain similar to burping through your
nose after drinking carbonated beverages?

Bread machines have fairly definite limits on how much dough (roughly
measured by cups of flour in same) they can handle.  Experiment with care.

The fruit dispenser sounds like a bleach dispenser.
We will try increasing 1/4 cup at a time.  What is the symptom of overload?
2.25 cups produces a loaf half as large as the pan (not half the size of a
regular loaf as the pan is only a half-loaf size).
I suppose we could also mix all the ingredients together by hand and let them
sit for an hour before turning on the machine so it would rise more, but then
why use the machine at all?  I suspect this one is simply not clever enough
to make whole grain bread.

"Yeast gas" might also have some alcohol vapor; doesn't yeast produce alcohol
as a waste product?  A hot shot of alcohol up the nose would be painful
enough.

Jim says this time he put in 2.5 cups flour, and more water, and then he
'threw in breakfast' - so we will have oatmeal bread if it works.

I don't think there could be enough alcohol directly from yeast to cause
somebody an inhilation problem, but maybe we're dealing with a hypersensitive
nose here.  Yeast can live in up to 14-15% alcohol (winemaking), but beyond
that you gotta distill.

Here's my usual 1 pound white bread recipe for my Panasonic bread machine:
2 1/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon dried milk powder
1 tablespoon oil (I dribble roughly that much olive oil in)
1 cup water

If my nose is hypersensitive it must run in the family, no pun 
intended.  When I cautioned my son not to get his nose too close to the 
vent he promptly gave the vent a big sniff and five seconds later he 
clutched his face and doubled over in nose-agony.  Whereupon my wife 
decided to see what the menfolk were carrying on about and despite our 
shouted warnings she too suffered the fate.  I guess nasal 
hypersentsitivity is not the only thing that runs in the family, 
although in our defense I must say you wouldn't believe something that 
painful could come from a bread machine no matter how many warnings are 
shouted at you.

Re: #33
Ask Jim about overload.  (Depending on the design of the machine, it could
be anything from poor mixing of the dough to excessive wear on the moving
parts to the motor burning out.)

Also, you can get a longer cycle with some machines by pulling the plug
some time into their cycle, then restarting later (perhaps after the thing
forgot where it was, maybe restarting a different cycle).  If & how this'll
work depends on details of your machine & recipe (probably take lots of
experimenting).

I think this one starts all over if you unplug it.  We only wanted to let it
rise longer, not knead it again (which would make it smaller again).  A 2 1/4
hour cycle probably works for white bread.  The dough mixes ok but it simply
does not have long enough to rise.  It also does not seem to keep the rising
dough warm and the kitchen is not all that warm  now.

The machine is a lot quicker to clean up than a bowl and spoon and pan.
Non-stick coatings are better than the Teflon my mother used to use.

It is not a good idea to add leftover wet oatmeal to a bread recipe - the
machine does not seem to overheat, but you get bread pudding.

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