I like to make my own pizzas. I don't particularly like white bread bases, so a few years ago I took to making my own wholemeal pizza base. I use a Kenwood BM250 bread maker I bought about 10 years ago, on it's dough setting to make the dough, roll it out and bake the pizza. Excellent.
Well I'd set the machine going, and it was whirring away in the kitchen whilst I was working in the workshop. *CLUNK* and the house power tripped. The mains monitor text me! I went to investigate. The RCD had tripped, indicating an earth fault somewhere, and refused to reset. I unplugged the bread maker, and it reset... and I was stuck with some half mixed dough...
After ordering domino's... I decided to take a look...
First thing of note was the damaged mains cable ...Tsk tsk! I should have noticed this before...
Much unscrewing followed, and the mains cable was replaced. Although requiring replacement, the cable's inner insulation was intact, and not the source of the problem...
Here you can see the motor drive for the stirrer thing, and the control PCB. I performed an insulation test on the motor at 1KV, and all was well....
The heater element inside the oven compartment, however, showed very poor insulation of just 10 Kilohms when cold. No good at all.
The element is removed. There's a small screw and a nut holding one end in....
... and a screw and nut holding this ceramic saddle clamp arrangement on the other.
A replacement element was found inexpensively on eBay (£6.39 delivered) and put the problem right. Another saved from landfill, and £70 cheaper than a new machine.
and if you want to try a healthier wholemeal pizza dough ... here's my recipe!
230ml Water
380g of wholemeal bread flour
~30ml Olive Oil ( a good glug! )
1 packet of bread machine yeast.
Some Italian herbs and spices!
Enjoy!
