There's no doubt about it, but bread machines are a great invention. Just throw random ingredients into a metal box, close the lid and wait. Before you know it, you're waking up to the smell of freshly baked bread. All I need now is something to start automatically grinding the coffee beans just as the bread machine beeps to announce that the loaf is ready.
The problem with bread machines is that they only make good bread. They don't make great bread. Anything that comes out of them beats your average shop-bought pre-sliced pap into the ground. Home-made, hand kneaded, oven-baked bread is still better. I'm sure the overall taste must be the same, but the texture is better. Bread machine bread tends to be too marshmallowy or it wants to crumble away into nothing. Leaving it to mature for a day results in a firmer loaf, but also a drier one. It kind of defeats the point of freshly baked bread too.
Trying to slice bread fresh out of a bread machine is rather like wrestling with warm cotton wool. And if you're thinking about straight lines, well just forget it. Melba toast? No way. Perhaps I'll just make some bread rolls...
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