Carrot & Pumpkin Toast (Panasonic Bread Maker Version)

Grate the carrot finely. Peel the pumpkin and cut into chunks, cook in water until done, drain thoroughly and mash. I was greedy and used 100 g of each, a total of 200 g of add-ins. In the end I felt it was too much and affected the kneading and proofing, so I suggest you use 50 g of each. As for the liquid, you can keep the amount the same, but don’t exceed 100 ml at most.

Put the milk, egg, salt, sugar, carrot, and pumpkin all into the inner pan of the bread maker.

Sift in the bread flour.

Put the yeast into the yeast dispenser. With the Panasonic bread maker, the yeast is placed separately and will only be added automatically after the dough has been kneaded into shape. After resting for a while, the machine kneads again to mix in the yeast. So the yeast does not get mixed with the salt and liquids right from the start and slowly begin fermenting while kneading. When you think about it, this design is really quite scientific!

Then I directly chose Program 1, the Toast Bread mode, and selected light crust color.

Press start to begin kneading. I actually added a bit too much pumpkin and carrot, exceeding the maximum amount recommended in the manual… It’s best to keep the total within 100 g…

After 10 minutes of kneading, add the softened butter. You can also add it at the beginning together with the milk and egg, but the “delayed butter method” (adding butter later) helps gluten development, making the bread softer and tastier.

Keep kneading. Once the dough is kneaded, the Panasonic bread maker will automatically drop in the yeast.

After resting for a while, the bread maker kneads again to fully mix in the yeast, then starts proofing and baking.

Just sit back and wait for it to come out of the oven!

First, about the design and workmanship: to be honest, it really leaves domestic-brand bread makers far behind. It’s truly gorgeous and feels very high quality!

On the left is the usual size of a standard bread maker inner pan, and on the right is the Panasonic SD-P103—super cute! Although it’s much smaller, it’s very well made, and it’s actually quite a bit heavier than the large pan on the left, which shows the material quality is good.

The lid has two layers. Open the first red layer and you’ll see the function menu on the inner lid; the round opening is where you put the yeast.

The accessories are very simple: just a manual, one measuring cup, and one measuring spoon. The workmanship is excellent, and the spoon even has 1/2 and 3/4 markings. This mini model doesn’t have many fancy functions—no jam, yogurt, rice cake modes or the like. It’s just very focused on baking bread, and does that job professionally.

Now a special mention for the manual! I was literally stunned when I got it. It’s so detailed, professional, and fun to read that it’s basically a magazine. The recipes inside are also very reliable.

One last point, and also the one many Panasonic fans love most: the Panasonic bread maker is super quiet. There’s none of that loud banging noise during kneading—it’s very quiet. You really have to use it to realize how important this is.

Overall, the Panasonic bread maker takes quite a long time to make bread: 4 hours for the toast bread program, 4 hours 20 minutes for ultra-soft bread, and 5 hours for whole wheat bread; the quick bread program is 2 hours. After carefully checking the manual and noting the times, I found that the actual kneading time in the Panasonic bread maker is quite short. If you don’t add an extra kneading cycle, I always worry the dough won’t be stretchy enough, and there’s no way to get a full “windowpane” membrane. But the timing for proofing and resting is arranged very well, so the baked bread always has a very soft texture. Years ago I heard many people recommend Panasonic bread makers, some even saying this is the only machine that can produce really tasty bread using the full automatic program. I think it’s because Japanese design is especially meticulous and professional—each mode is truly carefully planned~