My husband is more than satisfied with the end-product of the new breadmaker he purchased to replace his original device that surprised us when its electronics broke down. The bread that he set to bake in the new Cuisinart breadmaking oven came out perfectly. Perfect in texture, taste and shape. What more could he possibly ask for?

Bread-making runs in the family. Our older son also uses a breadmaker. Whereas the rest of us all rely on putting the ingredients together and kneading the resulting dough, and then forming the breads that we plan on baking, by hand, in the traditional method. We derive our satisfaction from baking bread as we've been accustomed to. We are, one might suppose, creatures of habit.

Yesterday as is usual for a Friday morning, I set about doing some baking for Friday-night dinner. I had picked up a recipe for cinnamon rolls from the newspaper the week before and while I found it interesting, the concept of baking each roll separately, in a large muffin tin, rather than bake up an attached batch of cinnamon rolls as is usually done, I wasn't satisfied with the recipe itself, a no-knead, moist yeast dough. Instead, I repeated the technique using my own recipe for the ingredients, which included sour cream and two eggs in the dough, kneading it, spreading it with cinnamon, raisins, butter and brown sugar, rolling it and cutting to fit the muffin cups.

And while I was at it, I thought I'd do some cheese-inlaid croissants (old cheddar) as well. And then proceeded to do just that. These are baked goods that do not really take up all that much time in preparation; the dough in fact can be done at any time, placed in a bowl, covered and refrigerated to be brought out at any time within the space of a few days for use in a finished baked product.

And they represent a bread form that the breadmaker cannot reproduce.