I have tested over half a dozen bread cars. This is my favorite.

The first bread I ever made, when I was 10 or 11 years old in the 90s, came out of a bakery. With her pale crust, crumbs printed and bumpy, it would not have been going well on Instagram. But that didn't prevent me and my brother from swallowing it, bringing it out from the device immediately and spreading dense with the Country Crock margarine.

That experience was important in activating my interest in food. And in the following years, after starting a career in food and cooking books, I was very sure that my bread car was a thing of the past – now I had a quotation -urination bread practice, Included jar with beginner sour dough with bubbles. But then a few years ago, in a task for a media, I had the opportunity to try a bunch of bakery … and to my great surprise, I really liked it! Making bread was suddenly too unclear with a car. I liked the smart pan to do everything, so easy to weigh the ingredients on the scales. I liked the closed division that grabbed the whole mess. And I really liked his perfect correction, forgetting the conditions of my excavated kitchen.

Machinery bread cut into slices — With the right car, the bread made with a bakery can be just as good – if not better! – that any other bread.

Despite my personal awakening, I learned that the bread car had never got out of fashion. Many homemade chefs have sworn for their own for decades. This eventually made me write a new cooking book, Bread machine bookAnd at the time I spent working on it, baking with several different models, understanding how much the device itself affects the results.

The short answer is: a lot. The distinctive factors included:

The ability to mix and dough: Starting from the puree flour stain in the corner to the beautiful cohesive doughs
Its insulation phase temperature: that produce isolated bread, with craters or doughs excellently fermented
Baking uniformity: the difference between irregular coloring and of a golden crust

Depending on the machine I used, the same bread recipe can have very different endings. But a car stood out among other things: it Zojirushi virtuouso plus. It is a giant of a appliance that takes almost the same amount of real estate of the kitchen as a large toast oven, and is certainly not the cheapest alternative there. But if you are serious about using your bread machine, this device is in a separate league.

Baker by pressing finger in corrective bread in a bread machine — You cannot overcome the perfect correction of this car.

Most importantly, it roasts traditional bread, thanks to its greatest size. They are not tall, box -shaped, with tree trunks from straight bread car models; Virtuoso Plus baked bread slices fit properly into a toast and are perfect for sandwiches and French toast.

In that traditional -shaped pan is another exciting feature: there are two voza for mixing and brewing, instead of single standard drivers. Located on both ends of the bread casserole, these double shovels ensure that the doughs are completely mixed, requiring little or no interference (such as using a shoulder to push the flour unjustified by the corners) and for them Mix better, producing more strength and better elasticity. And while the smallest pan of the bread machine are lined with a thin layer of potatoes and scratches, the strong and smooth coating of Zojirush remains smooth and without scratches, even after more than three years of use.

The weakest characteristic of many bread cars is their baking ability. Most have a heating coil wrapped in the base of the pan, which generates heat concentrated from the bottom of the unit. This composition often gives bread with faded crusts and chopped redness on the sides, as well as bumpy cubes and an uneven general crumb – the stereotype of the bread car. Virtuoso Plus, on the other hand, has a secondary heater element on the car lid, which circulates heat throughout the baking room to draw evenly fried bread with attractive cubes.

Bread press button on the bread machine panel — You can use different machine features to fit your recipe.

If that weren't enough, what I like most about Virtuoso Plus is that while you can bake a piece of very good bread with pressing a button – it has all the predetermined courses you expect, from white wheat and wheat complete. It is predetermined in “without salt”, “gluten -free” and fast courses – you can also customize the settings. For example, you can create a program that only mixes and cooks the dough, at this moment you can remove the dough from the car and let it slowly raise it in the refrigerator. The next day, continue where you leave it – turn the dough into a car for lifting, shaping, correction and baking, or go manually and do it by hand and in the oven. I use my bread machine all the time with these isolated functions and works especially well for baking projects without bread such as dinner rolls, bagelsOR cinnamon. In fact, this makes my bread car the best tool when I make almost every bread at all. (Learn more here: You know a way to use a bakery. Here are even more.)

There are a lot of bakery there. But because the car greatly affects the result, you will need a better bakery if you want to make better bread. Virtuoso Plus produces the best bread I have made and simply cannot pass for its mixing ability, even baking and personal bread courses. And if you find yourself asking if Margarina Country Crock is still around – it really is. The 90s have returned, people, as if they never left.