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Itt; people not understanding they are making an analogy
I had a bread maker and it drove me crazy. It was Schrodinger’s bread box. Put in ingredients, wait, and at the end it’s either oddly shaped bread or a brick. Seemingly absolutely randomly. I hated it with my whole heart and gave it to my neighbor, who could not cook so 75% or whatever was a good enough success rate for her.
Bread is not difficult to make by hand (well, sourdough at least is easy & forgiving) but it takes knowledge of how the dough should look and feel. Flour can act different on different days, the ambient temperature matters, and how old is your yeast, there is no way to absolutely standardize what is going into that machine.
I mean, if the future generation of bakers learn how to bake from TikTok, Blake here might be onto something.
except compared to before covid the exact same models with no updates or revisions have all tripled in price at least
Well, there have been home baking machines since the 1980s. They’ve never taken off.
A bit of a tangent:
Bread machines are the absolute best for one thing: fresh baked bread ready for when you wake up, without having to get up at 3 am to do it. Load that baby up at night, set the timer, and wake up to your place smelling amazing.
I was a baker for some years about 23 years ago, I will tell any baker that they will make better money working for the company delivering the flour, probably have better hour and still get to eat baked goods all the time. Unless you are a craft baker you are just reheating frozen dough.
The quickest way to ruin the enjoyment of making food is to do it for customers. I’ve been told for those last 20ish years that I should open a restaurant, I always reply the same “I cook for those I love and like, not asshole customers”
Unless you are a craft baker you are just reheating frozen dough
Let me guess: USA?
I really wish making food was a more viable commercial option. A few years ago I looked into setting up a food truck and holy shit are those things expensive. I occasionally go to food-truck-athons and even with how insanely overpriced their offerings are, I don’t see how they can ever be profitable. Around where I live, you can’t even get permits for a food truck unless you’re associated with a physical restaurant.
I’ve heard “you love cooking? You should open a restaurant!” so many times and it’s such a horrible cliché!
Even if customers weren’t assholes, it would still suck. There’s no better way to kill your enjoyment of something than to do it for money!
Hospitality is both a satisfying and dreadful job at the same time. It doesn’t pay enough for what the work is. But the fundamental work is satisfying. The only chefs I’ve known who really enjoyed their jobs were private chefs for individual rich families. Both were well paid and had a lot of creative freedom.
There are some very rare professions for which it CAN work. Being an author writing books for instance. That is a job I would enjoy, all alone with my laptop on the couch just typing away. Pure bliss
All fun and games until you get writer’s block. The ideas won’t come but the rent is still due. Good luck enjoying the work under that pressure.
Also good times when your offerings are swamped by AI slop.
The quickest way to ruin doing most anything you love is to do it for a living.
That’s why I never committed to professional arsonist and just burn things as a hobby.
So you don’t take small commissions from private individuals?
Cash, no. However, if someone has an art project that I agree with and wants to donate the supplies I am open for commissions.
based
That’s a failed joke to me. When I was living in London I bought one of those and I was making better and cheaper bread that I could find, including electricity cost.
That thing paid itself very quickly and I was happier with it.
And the AI that’s trying to moke is better than a dozen people in my company. We recently got bored of waiting for a tool and tried to just prompt it. In a few hours it was in better shape starting from scratch that another team has managed in over a month.
Of course I am proficient enough I could spot the issues quickly and prompt a solution
You forgot the “/s”. In our current times someone could believe you really think that way.
OMG we are so
cookedbaked.Didn’t you hear? Elon announced the total collapse of the baking industry within the next 6 months.
Classic Pump and dump. You’re better investing in the fermenting industry in the long term.
Oh my, I just realized that we have now everything we need to cook food at home. We don’t need the restaurants anymore! The whole industry is going to be dead in few years.
I love making bread. I’ve made a lot of bread. Bread takes hours. The best loaf of bread I’ve ever made I could have gotten for a few dollars at a store, and it would probably be better. Having said that bread makers are the closest thing to a food replicator you can get, throw some ingredients in, push a button, come back in a few hours and bam, fresh loaf of bread.
It’s likely cheaper and better when store bought because you’re trying to replicate the kind of bread that’s easily mass produced and greatly benefits from economy of scale. Lean doughs are so much less work, and they’re both cheaper and tastier when homemade. I’d even go as far as to say it’s less work than going to the grocery store to pick up a loaf.
Eh I’ve done all kinds and sure some are more basic and therefore easier and quicker than others but not by enough to matter in this case. You’re right that it’s all about the economy of scale issue, and they can duplicate success better than I can and I’ve been doing it for years.
This little machine is incredible. I disagree with OP’s premise, but this makes yummy little loaves.
Is it super loud, though? I had a bread machine years ago and I rarely used it because the noise was very unpleasant.
I haven’t tried that particular model, but bread machines are, indeed, great. Instead of buying large loaves (which go bad in a few days) when I need bread I can just buy flour (which keeps for ages) and bake my own whenever I need it. The process of loading up the ingredients takes a few minutes but beyond that you can just hit a button and let it do its thing, and the resulting bread tastes better than what you’d get from a store.
This is such a weird post. Is it satirical? Baking as a profession functionally does not exist anymore.
Where do you live that has no bakeries?
That’s fair, but we also get successful bread much more than half the time.
It’s kind of similar, I think. I mean most store bought bread is low quality compared to the artisinal product. Corporations don’t care if the product sucks so long as they can replace the worker.
The difference is that bread is a minimum viable product, while Gen AI slop tends to eventually become descructive vs. productive.
I used to have a naysayer coworker, and he was the most annoying shit. He’d always say things like, “In ten years, this building won’t even be here anymore.” Eventually, you just learn to say, “Okay, I’m just going to get back to work.”
