Panasonic Croustina bread maker — test, features, pros and cons

In the arse­nal of the Pana­son­ic Crousti­na SD-ZP2000 bread machine there are as many as 18 auto pro­grams. Of these, sev­en are for bak­ing bread with a crispy crust (such bread for break­fast is loved in many Euro­pean coun­tries: in France, Italy, Bel­gium and oth­ers).

To ensure this crust, the engi­neers made the inside of the bread mak­er’s door smooth and reflec­tive of heat. It is this reflect­ed heat that makes the bread crispy on top.

Dur­ing the test, we test­ed two “crunchy” pro­grams — and there were no prob­lems in both cas­es: the dough was knead­ed and risen, the bread was baked, the fill­ing was even­ly dis­trib­uted inside. And the crust crunched appe­tiz­ing­ly (every­thing is on the video).

In addi­tion to pro­grams for bak­ing crispy bread, Pana­son­ic Crousti­na has modes for bread with a del­i­cate crust. We used one of them to bake East­er cake.

I must say, putting the ingre­di­ents for the cake, we made a mis­take — we put the raisins ahead of time. But it’s even more inter­est­ing this way — it turned out to find out if the bread machine for­gives the owner’s small inac­cu­ra­cies.

Turned out to be for­giv­ing. The raisins were even­ly dis­trib­uted through­out the mass of the cake, there were no trou­bles with bak­ing.

The cake itself was baked and deli­cious. How­ev­er, it seemed to us that it still tast­ed more like bread, let’s say, “inspired by” East­er cake. But a lot depends on the recipe.

By the way, this bread mak­er has two tem­per­a­ture sen­sors — inside and out­side — this allows you to accu­rate­ly con­trol the tem­per­a­ture dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion of bread. In par­tic­u­lar, dur­ing knead­ing and rais­ing the dough.

In Pana­son­ic Crousti­na, you can not only bake, but also sim­ply pre­pare the dough — this is the knead­ing mode with­out bak­ing. For dumplings, for exam­ple, dumplings or khinkali, and for many oth­er things.

The con­clu­sion is that I liked the new Pana­son­ic Crousti­na bread machine. All three types of bak­ing turned out. The bread was baked deli­cious, where it was nec­es­sary — there was a crispy crust. And the crust turned out ten­der.

The bread machine itself looks pret­ty — fash­ion­able min­i­mal­ism. Plus, it is very easy to use: every­thing is clear, any­one will quick­ly fig­ure it out.

Of the minus­es, we note the lack of an auto-dis­penser for addi­tion­al ingre­di­ents (and the func­tion of auto­mat­i­cal­ly adding them, respec­tive­ly) — they did not place it on the smooth reflec­tive sur­face of the lid — they decid­ed that the crisp was more impor­tant. Well, the price — the device is not cheap: more than 200 dol­lars.

For any bread machine, it is very impor­tant to strict­ly fol­low the sequence with which the ingre­di­ents are placed in it. This must be done in strict accor­dance with the recipe, oth­er­wise the result may be dis­ap­point­ing — some ingre­di­ents should not be in con­tact before knead­ing and stand­ing. In addi­tion, it is bet­ter to remove the bak­ing dish while lay­ing the ingre­di­ents — so that they do not acci­den­tal­ly fall on the heat­ing ele­ment — this will get rid of unnec­es­sary smoke.