Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I love this breadmaker! I was a little hesitant about it being Hamilton Beach because it was a Zoj or anything but for less than half the price of a Zoj it has been doing the job! I've used it for 2 weeks now and I love it (and so does my family)! I have been making bread almost every day for the past two weeks. This past weekend I was making 2 loaves a day because I was babysitting my sisters and kids and they kept asking for more bread. My first loaf, I did the delayed start option. I put in all the ingredients at 10:30pm (you can't use the delayed start option if the recipe calls for any dairy products. I still don't know if this includes dry milk but definitely for eggs or milk) and it was ready by 8am the next day. Here are some tips that I figured out while using it: 1. Delay Start Option: You need to take into account both the baking time and the time before the machine needs to start baking. Example: I put in my ingredients at 10:30pm and I wanted it to be ready by 7:30am the next morning. The baking time for that recipe was 3 hours so from 4:30am-7:30am it would begin baking and from 10:30pm - 4:30am is 6 hours so after selecting the cycle, crust and loaf size I set the delay start time to 9 hours (6 hours waiting time + 3 hours baking time). 2. Be sure to follow the recipes exactly. The manual and a lot of the recipes I found always say to put the liquids and salt and sugar first, flour then the yeast on top so that the yeast doesn't touch the salt. I am very particular in When measuring always pack the flour (dry products) and smooth it out on top. I made one recipe 3 times and the third time I made it the top sunk in and it was a little harder than the first 2 loaves. I think what happened was instead of using Active Dry Yeast I may have used Instant Yeast. I'm not much of a baker to know the difference but I think I grabbed the wrong one and it didn't rise completely. I have bread machine yeast but I only used it when the recipe specifically said Bread Machine Yeast. 3. The Paddle is a little hard to remove so I did notice there is a straight edge that needs to line up with the straight edge on the stick at the bottom of the pan but I still have a hard time removing it. You just have to keep twisting and lifting, sometimes I soak it in water for a bit and then try removing it. That is sometimes a little easier but I still have a little bit of a hard time. Also the hole on the bottom of the bread from the paddle isn't big at all. I've heard from some of my friends who had the old breadmaker machines that the hole would go through the hole loaf. This is not the case. It will probably only show on your last slice of bread and it's not really a hole, more of an indentation in the bread. 4. I kind of don't like that there isn't an OFF button so I just unplug it. 5. It is a little big on my counter-top but since it's black it's not an eyesore. I just don't like having too much stuff on my counter-tops so I'm still trying to find someplace to store it. 6. I really like that it has a window that you can see the dough through without opening the lid but you I also like that you CAN open the lid (when the window gets foggy from the temperature) without screwing up the process. My kids love this option too as they are so fascinated with seeing how the bread is kneaded and rises etc. 7. There is somewhat of a vibration during the kneading process but when I read about it in the manual I thought it would be like as if it were on a bumpy road and it could possibly fall off of my counter-top but it really isn't that bad. I'll update my post with pictures and a video later. Overall, so far, I absolutely love my machine and so does my family! I love that we don't have to buy bread any more and the ingredients so far are lasting me about 1-2 weeks (of which I made bread at least once a day or every other day).