I live in Shanghai’s outskirts – far away from any City Shop or Baker & Spice – and accessible bread options are disappointing, as I am still unaccustomed to the tastes of fake butter and meat floss. But a friend recently gifted me with a Donlim 1128s bread machine and I now have wonderful loaf bread essentially at the push of a button.

Donlim brand appliances are manufactured by a company headquartered in Guangdong and their model 1128s bread machine sells on Taobao for under RMB300. Bread machines are incredibly easy to use. All ingredients are added at once (but in a prescribed order), baking mode and loaf size are selected, a paddle built-in to the bucket stirs the dough and the machine regulates the cooking process through kneading, rising and baking cycles. The total process takes about three hours.

Most recipes in the instruction manual are variants on a basic white loaf preparation, which I’ve adapted as seen below. In general, I have found that the overall liquid content needs to be increased above Donlim’s recommendations by ten percent or so. Also, substituting egg and milk for water in most cases improves both bread texture and flavor.

Ingredients
¾ cup milk
1 egg
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups bread flour
1 ¼ teaspoons yeast

Instructions
1- Place the ingredients into the bread bucket in the order shown above, with liquid ingredients first, then the dry ones, and finally the yeast. The flour should be spread across the liquid to form a seal and the yeast is dropped into a small cavity in the flour, which you can form with your finger.

2- Select the “basic” bread mode and 450g volume, then push start. After the 3 hour cooking cycle, remove bread from bucket and place on a rack to cool. When you remove the bread from the bucket, the paddle will be lodged in the bread and this must be pulled out with a hook before slicing.

I have made about seven loaves so far and all were edible. Three or four were terrific. The only botched effort was an attempt to freestyle potato bread, which collapsed late in the baking process – too much yeast to flour, most likely.

Despite the hideous appearance, a stint on the grill pan turned that shabby loaf into decent hamburger buns.

Blogger Hillbilly Housewife has much more detailed coverage of bread machines in general here and this is a very useful tool in deciphering (or replacing, nearly) the Donlim manual, which is in Chinese only.

About the Blog
Shanghai Nosh Advisory, an independent food blog in Shanghai, has teamed up with City Weekend to show you some of the best authentic local fare in town. You can check out the original blog over here.