Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 29, 1992 TAG: 9201280355
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
ON THE RISE
IT sounds so Jetsonesque:A machine that actually mixes, kneads, rises, then bakes a loaf of bread - and all you have to do is push a button?
It's a fact, say owners and promoters of the nation's hottest-selling small electrical appliance, the automatic bread machine.
"It's great because you know what's going into the bread - and there are no preservatives," says Salem potter Susan Ogier, who's had a machine since August.
The best part, of course, is the machine does everything but measure and insert the ingredients. Roughly four hours later, you get fresh, warm bread - and the enticing smell of a bakery in your own house.
Ogier's Welbilt, among the largest makers of bread machines, retails for about $150 in discount stores. Resembling the "Star Wars" robot R2D2, it has a round window dome-top and makes round, coffee can-shaped loaves weighing up to 2 pounds.
"The kids really like that you can watch what it's doing through the top," Ogier says. "For a while there, we used to watch the bread instead of the TV."
One other major perk: You can put the ingredients in and set the timer before you go to bed, then wake up to just-baked, warm bread for breakfast.
Also, as Ogier likes to joke, you can smugly bypass the bread aisle at the grocery store altogether.
With an estimated 3 million bread machines sold in the United States - 1 million in 1991 alone - the machines were easily the kitchen-gadget Christmas gift to give in 1991. What's more, enthusiasts predict, they're not about to become the garage-sale item of 1992.
"I think these are the next microwaves," says Annapolis, Md., homemaker Donna Rathmell German, who's written two bread machine cookbooks. "Five or 10 years out, I think you'll see them in 95 percent of all homes."
If health and convenience factors don't turn people into machine devotees, German says, the cost of homemade bread just might. Made at home, a loaf of bread ranges from 15 to 30 cents, depending on the types of flour used and the quantity purchased.
Roanoker Kitty Landis had been debating buying a bread machine for a year before she finally got one last fall. "I wasn't sure whether I'd use it enough to get the $200 back from it, but I know it's already paid for itself by now," she says, having already made more than 100 loaves with it.
Landis has a Hitachi brand, which makes the more standard rectangular loaves. She buys yeast in bulk at Sam's Wholesale Club for $2 a pound and grocery-store bread flour for $1 per 5 pounds.
"It ends up costing practically nothing per loaf," she says. "And I especially like having fresh bread to give to a neighbor or anyone who visits."
Cooks busy preparing a dinner party can take a few minutes to insert the ingredients early in the day, set the timer, and have the bread ready and warm when the meal begins.
And if you want to deviate from the machine shape, most have settings that allow you to stop the process after the second kneading, remove the dough and form it into a fancier shape to be baked in a conventional oven. Bagels, pizza crusts, croissants and rolls can be made this way, too.
Invented in Japan in 1986 and introduced here in 1987, bread machines initially cost over $350. Now with more companies making them and more people buying them, costs range from $100 for small-loaf machines to $150-$275 for standard sizes. Some companies have also introduced premixed ingredients packets and bread-makers that double as jam-makers and rice-makers.
Why are people gobbling these gadgets up? Three reasons, says Tom Lacalamita, Welbilt's Long Island-based marketing manager:
Older people who love homemade bread but can no longer knead it themselves turn to the machine to do the work for them.
Middle-agers who never quite mastered the concept of yeast, but appreciate what it can do for them, are fascinated by it.
And two-income families who don't have the time to do it themselves look to it to provide that homey element of fresh-baked bread from their very own kitchens.
"The press has been calling this a yuppie kitchen item, but let me assure you this is a very middle-America family thing, not a yuppie thing," Lacalamita insists. "For one reason, yuppies don't own measuring cups. For another, they live in urban environments, where they have access to great deli breads.
"Plus, when yuppies have dinner parties, they have everything catered; they don't make it themselves."
If you haven't yet heard of these machines, don't worry. Market research has shown that only 6 percent of the American public are familiar with them - a figure that makes Lacalamita and his competitors jump at the potential.
Cookbook author German, who at last count had eight machines in her home, explains that makers are doing limited marketing - mostly because they don't need to: Word-of-mouth works wonders.
"From my experience, you can take a loaf of this bread to a gathering of at least five people. And every time, one of those five will eventually get a machine," she explains.
"Once people believe you that the machine actually does everything, they've gotta have it."