The Machine
Just add the ingredients, press a few buttons, and the Panasonic SD-P104 will knead, rest and bake a perfect loaf in four hours. Automated dispensers drop pre-loaded yeast, and extras like raisins and nuts, into the dough at the right time. You get a 450g loaf each time, and can decide how crisp you want the crust to be. A timer (up to 13 hours) lets you set when you want your loaf to be ready, so you can wake up to freshly baked bread!
While eight of its 13 modes are for making breads like soft, wholemeal and country loaves, the rest are for baking cakes, making cookie and pizza dough as well as dumpling skins, and even melting chocolate. It comes with a manual that includes recipes for cinnamon rolls and savoury stuffed buns.
Foolproof Bread
My first two loaves of white bread didn’t rise and had a kueh-like texture, even though I followed the recipe in the manual. It turns out that not all flour is made equal – the bread maker works best with Bake King flour, available at Fairprice.
With it, I attained a beautiful, puffy loaf with small, even air pockets. I love that the recipes are ultra versatile – I could play around with them and add extra ingredients, like peanut butter and chocolate powder, without worrying about messing up ratios and ending up with undercooked bread. I added six tablespoons of Milo to a basic bread recipe and baked it in the soft-bread mode, which gave me a sweet, slightly chewy bread that was perfect dunked in milk.
Simple Cakes
It can’t produce airily light sponge cakes, but it does a decent job with a simple butter cake. The machine does the mixing too, so all I had to do was measure out the ingredients and wait an hour for the cake to be ready. My lemon cake came out with a light crust and a dense, moist crumb, similar to a pound cake.
Cleaning It
The bread pan empties with a light shake or two. Residue stuck to the kneading blade and sides of the pan washes off easily with detergent.
VERDICT
“An easy-to-use and compact baking machine that lets you get creative with an everyday staple.” – Rachel Xie
Panasonic SDP104 Bread Maker, $329, from major electrical stores.
This article was originally published in Simply Her April 2014.
All product and pricing information was correct at the time of the magazine’s publication. We advise readers to check with the store for the latest availability and pricing information.