Breadmaker Question. Need Some advice.

[Keaniebean]

Odsox, I think you just rained on my parade. I'm very . Those loaves looked lovely.

[indy]

Just as a thought when the rayburn is on I use the breadmaker to make the dough and then I bake them in the oven as its already on, in the summer I use the breadmaker throughout. I think I am not wasting any energy then.

[Odsox]

Just out of interest, regarding the 'green' thing - my electric oven uses 6 times more kw/h than my bread machine does to bake a loaf. Therefore, I have to bake 6 loaves to break even on energy use. However, it's not as simple as that since there's no way I can fit 6 loaves in the oven...

I have to say that I based my "green" comment on nothing more than a feeling.
But having a stab at the putting some numbers to my "feeling", I came up with this.

The fast bake on the Panasonic that a lot of people on here recommend is 115 minutes, so for three loaves that would presumably be 345 minutes, or 5 hours 45 mins.
I don't know the consumption of a breadmaker but I think it's probably about 500 watts, so cycling on and off for 50% would give an overall baking consumption of about 1.5 KWh, plus whatever heat it uses to raise the dough.

My oven is a gas oven (just to make it difficult) and the burner is rated at 1.5 KW. It takes 5 minutes to preheat at full power and then reduces to a very small flame that is probably about 250 watts for the 25 minutes it takes to bake my 3 loaves.
I make that about 0.33 KWh plus nothing for raising as that's done in the conservatory.
Of course that's not the whole story as bottled gas here is a bit more expensive than electricity, but would add less than 10% to the cost.

I hope my figures are right, but I'm sure someone with a better functioning brain than mine will correct me if not.