Bread Machine

The Breadman Ultimate makes and bakes most kinds of yeast bread--white, whole wheat, rye, honey banana, or crusty French--as well as quick or batter breads. Try the recipes in the booklet or your own favorites--just be sure the dry ingredients total less than about 5 cups so the dough doesn't overflow the 9-1/2-inch (nonstick) baking pan. If your recipe calls for adding ingredients late in the kneading cycle, there's a tray to hold and automatically dispense them. If you want to make bread that doesn't conform to the loaf shape, the machine can mix and raise the dough prior to shaping for baking in a conventional oven.

For the beginner the process couldn't be easier, and even if you're an old hand at making bread from scratch, you'll find yourself baking much more frequently. And this machine quickly pays for itself: think of how many $3 or $4 loaves you won't be buying over the bread maker's lifetime! One drawback is worth noting: If you're a fan of the Breadman Plus, you may be less satisfied with the mixing results of the Ultimate's single bread hook versus the Plus's dual dough hooks. --Toni Reineke

This machine has all the bells and whistles for you. If you consider good bread an important part of your diet, get this one. But if you just want a fresh loaf of homemade white bread occasionally, you can save a lot of money by getting one of the lesser models.

First of all, any joker can use it. You throw in a few ingredients, push 2 buttons, and take off for a couple of hours - only to return to a nice, warm, make-the-house-smell-wonderful loaf of bread. I hate instruction manuals, & didn't bother reading this one. Want a loaf when you get up? Set the timer when you go to bed for 7 hours (or 12?). Simple as that. The bread doesn't go soggy if you miscalculate or over-sleep & it ends up sitting in the machine for awhile.

For the first time in my life, I actually now get excited about creatively creating food. The few basic recipes in the book are a good start - particularly the honey banana one! I've tried most of them, and then started throwing other things in, to see how they would turn out. The strangest thing is, they all seem to work (with varying degrees of consumer satisfaction). In other words, this bread maker can handle/mix/bake just about any kind of bread out there. Pizza dough, too, apparently, although I have yet to try it.

I've been told that the best bread machines now have 2 mixers (this model has one). Perhaps this is true, but I have never had clumps of unmixed flour, or anything other than a well-blended loaf.

Is it a smooth, quiet machine? No. But I daresay that it would be tough to muffle something with such a powerful motor and keep it reasonably affordable and compact. Plus, the most noise is made when the dough gets thrown around, and lasts for only a few minutes. If your kitchen is more than one room away from your bedroom, you probably won't even notice.

Finally, the finished loaves of bread are aesthetically pleasing. A far cry from the old perfectly symmetrical square loaves that I've seen in the past, this machine's horizontal pan allows for a nicely risen & browned crust. A nice blend of old-school looks with new-fangled technology.

I didn't know quite what to expect, never having seen a bread machine before. I can tell you that this idiot-proof machine goes from zero to staff-of-life in 3 hours 32 minutes. Basically, it's like this: You dump in the liquid ingredients. You dump in the solid ingredients. You make a little hole in the flour pile, for the yeast, and then you dump the yeast in there. And If you have stuff you want dribbled on the top of the final loaf, you put that stuff in a special little compartment, which falls open at the right time.

Then you push a button.

Hey presto, delicious bread! I honestly didn't believe the bread could be so good - or the machine so forgiving. Just for laughs I dumped a bran-muffin ready-mix package into the 'honey banana bread' recipe - the result was better than the normal recipe. You can dump in a lot of things - fruits, nuts, weird flours, molasses, rye, caraway and poppy seeds, oats - it all works. I've yet to have the machine protest, even when I put it on the wrong setting.

Sourdough and really good white bread, as you might expect, take a little extra work, but each can be attained. And don't underestimate the fun factor - kids will love making bread and eating the fruits of their labors!

I'd recommend this for anyone who likes to cook or eat bread!