I think that all the negative comments about breadmakers aboard come from cruisers who don't have one aboard now and never had before. Not really experience talking imho....
We have the full size Zojirushi aboard and it's like the dremel-tool, vise-grips or
dinghy: would never want to do without!!
Many complain about the space it takes up. Sure it does, so? I see so much junk that's carried on boats that is way less useful than a breadmaker. Toss some out and you have space for the breadmaker.
Also, carrying loaf-shaped dough in the
freezer is much more wasting space in a much more precious location! We use the
freezer for meat,
fish etc.
Energy
consumption... actually a breadmaker consumes much LESS energy than kneading by hand and using the oven. The oven wastes energy like nothing else but it's from a different source:
propane instead of
diesel. We carry lots of
diesel but not so much propane: when in paradise, we need propane well before we need diesel. One can stay away using a breadmaker much longer than using the oven. True for any
boat.
Heat.... forget about using the oven for baking bread in the tropics while staying below: it's unbearable. The heat generated by a breadmaker is nothing compared to the oven (the reason it's much more energy efficient). Using the BBQ outside for baking bread is better but wastes even more propane.
A breadmaker only consumes noticeable energy while in the baking phase. The mixing, kneading and rising phases don't count. We set the timer at night and wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread!
The bread produced by a good breadmaker is much better than using marine-ovens. I hear stories about some ovens being better but these manufacturers are all bankrupt. Our Force10 isn't up to the job (temperature not high enough). We love the bread oven-baked by fellow-cruisers but never found any that looked and/or tasted as good as the bread from the Zojirushi. Oven-baked is also much more dense/heavy (too much).
The Zojirushi is the best choice aboard because it's timer/program survives power-outages up to 3 minutes. One can easily switch from genset to
inverter or the other way around. Most other breadmakers re-start which is the end of the bread. Also, it has user-definable programs and can bake anything. We also use it for all other dough making like for pizza etc.
The Zojirushi can do sourdough bread! This not only tastes better, it keeps much longer without using artificial preservatives!
Here in the
Caribbean they sell dry active yeast in pound-packages for $5.- We keep some in the fridge for everyday use and the rest in the freezer. Keeps good forever. We use Tupperware spice containers which are 100% vapor tight so it doesn't get wet.
ciao!
Nick.