My rating: Five Stars
It's hard to find a negative comment about Panasonic bread making equipment. And the long-established SD253 model is the one which almost every comparative review has been naming as the best buy for some considerable time. Now Panasonic has replaced this (June 2007) with the SD255 and for anyone looking for a kitchen bread maker, this was always going to be the model to buy.
Panasonic has released two similar models, the SD254 and SD255, the differences being that the SD255 has an automatic dried fruit and nut dispenser (which saves adding them by hand during baking), and a rye bread mode. Other than that, the two are similar, and share the same instruction manual. Expect to pay £20 more for the SD255.
OK, here's my SD255, freshly delivered from Amazon UK on 11 June 2007. At the time of writing, this brand new bread maker was £99 everywhere,
so I went for Amazon's generally reliable delivery and free shipping.
The breadmaker is simply packed, and comes with the only accessories you really need, a measuring cup and spoon, as well as a pretty decent 36-page A4 instruction manual, which is in English throughout, rather than being a multilingual effort. A big tick for Panasonic there.
The manual takes you through the breadmaking process very straightforwardly, explaining the different ingredients and the many alternatives you can use. It's a nice half-hour's reading if you can restrain yourself from plugging the unit in and just getting on with it. Of course, making bread with these sort of breadmaking machines is so absurdly easy that the manual's authors manage to outline the whole process in a two-page spread. Put the blade in the pan. Measure the ingredients and add them. Select the bread type on the front panel. Select the loaf size, crust colour, and start time. Press the start button. Wait 2-5 hours for the bread to bake. Take it out. And that's it.
The display and control buttons are better laid-out than the old SD253 model which won every group test hands-down in the past. There are six buttons laid out in a row (Select, Option, Size, Crust, Timer and Start) and you just have to go through each, in that order, selecting the desired setting each time. The buttons are clearly labelled in English, with no cryptic icons or symbols - it really looks as if a professional ergonomist has specified the entire operating process, which couldn't be clearer.
By now you're asking "but does it make decent bread?" and I can report that it most certainly does. Don't expect miracles: no domestic machine can beat making bread the old fashioned way if you have the time and talent - but with a bit of trial and error, you will get bread at least as good as the best supermarket stuff, with the added bonus of being able to take it out of the bread maker warm. Smells good already, doesn't it?
If your domestic arrangements are as undisciplined as ours, a breadmaker may save you a lot of money too. Several times a month, a certain member of our household will look at the empty bread bin in the morning and declare: "we're out of bread - I'll pop into the supermarket on the way home tonight". By that evening, the bread bin does indeed have fresh content - but alongside are two or three carrier bags full of the stuff which supermarkets are so clever at getting you to buy when you pop in for something totally unrelated. Hang on: you went to buy a loaf of bread and spent twenty quid while you were there? Seems ridiculous, but we all know how it happens. Since having a breadmaker, we've actually cut down on our trips to the supermarket and our opportunities for temptation. The machine probably paid for itself inside three or four months.
So, what sort of bread can the Panasonic SD-255 produce? There are seven main baking modes: "basic", whole wheat, rye, french, italian, sandwich and gluten-free. Within each of these, however, there are many recipe variations, and you're likely to come up with your own preferred ones too. The user guide gives seven pages of recipes, from a plain white loaf to pesto and pine nut or tomato focaccia loaves. It makes it look simple to throw in anything from passata to cep mushrooms, and indeed it is. You're only limited by your imagination, as they say.
Don't forget that breadmakers like this do a great job of making dough too - if you master the pizza base recipe, you'll never buy ones from the supermarket again. There are pages of dough recipes in the user guide too, so the Panasonic SD255 can get you started on rolls, croissants and panettone. Finally, there's a "bake only" mode if you want to use the machine to bake many types of cake. By this point however, as with many modern kitchen appliances, you probably need to take a step back and ask "what's wrong with doing the traditional way, like using an oven?"
Right, let's have a practical test for beginners. To do this, we gave the Panasonic SD255 to an experienced cook who had baked plenty of bread by hand before, but never used a breadmaking machine. We gave her a packet of bread mix - just to really make things simple - and the instruction manual. Our cook, by her own admission, isn't the best at reading technical manuals. But she knows a good loaf of bread when she sees one.
The good news is that the whole process generated just one observation: "is that it?". Reading the instructions took 5 minutes, and preparing the mix took about 1 minute. Our cook instinctively went for the "quick bake" mode, so the loaf was ready just two hours later.
And the results weren't bad at all! Our cook didn't think the loaf lived up to the standards of proper handmade bread, although bearing in mind it used packet mix ingredients, she was reasonably impressed. The crust was a little chewy, and the outside unevenly coloured overall, but the bread itself was quite pleasant, and the loaf size sensible. And of course, as with all breadmakers, there's a small hole in the bottom of the loaf where the mixing paddle came to rest! Would we have been disappointed with this loaf if we'd paid, say, 60p for it at the supermarket? No - and with finer ingredients and more considered baking techniques, our cook thought she could do a lot better with this bread maker - and was keen to try.
I'll be adding to this review over the next few weeks as I get time to try more ambitious bread making with my Panasonic SD255. But in the meantime, I can thoroughly recommend this model as an incremental but definite improvement over the machine which has set the standard for domestic breadmakers over the past few years. I do not think it's worth investigating any further - go buy this one with confidence. The link below will take you to the Panasonic SD255 product information page at Amazon UK. If they have it for under £100, grab yourself a little gem. Five Stars CR
Direct link to Amazon UK's Panasonic SD-255 product page
UPDATE: The review above is for the SD-255 breadmaker. You may also like to look at the slightly more straightforward SD-254 model (click here for a price check)
Still not even any advance news on the replacements for these two models, the Panasonic SD256 breadmaker and the Panasonic SD257 breadmaker, so you can safely assume the models above will be the current ones for a good while yet.
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Panasonic SD255 - Panasonic SD-255 - Panasonic SD 255
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Panasonic SD253 - Panasonic SD-253 - Panasonic SD 253 (discontinued)
Panasonic SD252 - Panasonic SD-252 - Panasonic SD 252 (discontinued)