My first run-in with a Bosch appliance was when I was a seminary student studying in Israel.  Thursday afternoons we all went to chessed families to help out.  Sometimes I would take the kids to the park, but I also loved helping in the kitchen.  This would inevitably involve making challah.

In case you don’t know, challah is a braided bread that Jewish families eat at the Shabbos (Sabbath) meals on Friday night and Saturday.  Making challah, like any bread, takes a long time and a lot of arm strength if you’re doing it by hand.  But this family that I was helping out had the most amazing dough mixer, which was of course one of the most popular Bosch kitchen appliances, the Bosch Universal Kitchen Machine.

That mixer was amazing.  It didn’t just pump out great challah.  Cakes, cookies, anything you were going to bake was a cinch.  I knew that there were some other attachments that could go with it– a blender and food processor which that family didn’t have, and I guess I just had such a great experience with it that I knew that when I got a bread mixer, it was going to be that one.

Fast forward a few years.  I was married and moving from a furnished rental apartment into a totally bare one.  I put off buying a washing machine for ages because I was so nervous about making such a major purchase, but of course after a bit I really needed to sit down and place an order for one.  I mean, you can only show up at your friends houses with bags of dirty laundry so many times before you start to feel uncomfortable… okay, I guess it was a little awkward from the get go.

When I sat down an started doing some research, the Bosch appliance reviews outshone the other brands.  The stores were in fact pushing a different brand, AEG, over the Bosch washers, but they couldn’t give me a  solid explanation of why it was a better machine.  Finally, I decided to make a call to some appliance repair men to see what they had to say.

They told me that the Bosch washing machine was just as good if not better than the AEG, and that Bosch appliance parts were readily availible in my area, should I ever need to replace something. Which, I haven’t.  I have not had a single problem with my washing machine in three years, barring the time that it was leaking after we moved into a new apartment a year after I bought it.

The Bosch appliance technician who came was very friendly and fished a little washer out of his pocket.  Seems the movers forgot to put it back when they moved it, and I didn’t even get charged for the visit either.  So yeah, I’ll call that no problems in three years– and counting.

My next brush with Bosch appliances came a few months ago, when I was buying a new dishwasher.  Once again, the dishwasher with the best ratings was a Bosch, but unfortunately it was out of my price range.  I did try to find some stores that sold discount Bosch appliances, but I couldn’t find anything that would bring the price down enough.  So I had to miss out on that one.

Anyway, when it comes to appliances, small or large, Bosch is my number one choice.  I’ll always do the research to see what the best option is because I’m just like that, but Bosch always comes out on top.