Easy to use, works 90% of the time
We received this bread machine as a Christmas present about 7 years ago. We didn't use it much then, but the last 3 years we have used it about 3-4 times a week. We went through a phase of making our own bread instead of buying bread for sandwiches. I love the ease of the machine and the versatility. I have made many types of bread as well as dough for pizza, cinnamon rolls and hamburger buns. Most recipes are done within 3 hours and there's an Express bake if you'd like a loaf in 85 minutes. However, I find those loaves to be more dense and not as tasty as the normal cycle. I have had some problems with this machine. I will sometimes start pizza dough before leaving for work and when my husband gets home (about an hour and a half later) it should be ready for him. Sometimes the dough does not mix at all. Most of the time it misses parts on the side and then the dough is lumpy. Sometimes when making bread it does the same and with the finished bread there is clumps of flour/sugar crusted on the side of the loaves. I usually have to wait a few minutes and then assist the machine in mixing the ingredients, just to make sure it's all mixed in. This means I cannot use the delay feature for bread. I also had a problem with my bread caving in the middle. I did some online research and tried adding more water/less water and finally realized that I was using too much yeast. I was following the recipe for the 1.5 pound loaf in the Oster instruction manuel and there must be a typo. It called for 2 and 3/4 tsp yeast. I dropped it to 1 and 3/4 and haven't had a problem yet. The 2 pound loaf calls for 2 tsp so I'm just assuming there was a typo. Lately I have been making the bread recipe but only doing the dough cycle and then baking my bread in the oven. I find that I have a nice looking loaf and I don't have weird slices from the paddle. I also don't like that the paddle leaves a huge hole in the bottom of the bread. It makes slicing the loaf for sandwiches very difficult. Baking it in the oven eliminates that. Stability While in Use Over time my machine has started to wobble while mixing and it "walks" across my counter
debtfreedicus
Logan, UT