Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Bought: March 3, 2013 @ 59.99 Date of this Review: November 12, 2015 Status of this breadmaker: Showing its age but still chugging! I have been relocated by my company (together with my family) here in the US from Singapore. We moved to New Jersey around Nov, 2012 and we have been buying loaves of bread from our nearby supermarket daily @ $2.50 a pop 5 times a week. Over the couple of months we noticed that we are feeling a bit "down" thinking it was just us adjusting to the weather but we were also gaining weight every month. So, trying to be "healthy" we started reading the labels of each food we buy and noticed a LOOOOT of ingredients that looked like from a science fiction/medical drama series (see attached photo). So we thought of making our own bread from scratch but didn't want to spend a lot of time kneading and rising the dough everyday. Enter this bread machine and some research enabled us to save money and in turn saved our health. For the money saving part, we sourced the following ingredients: Walmart: Great Value Flour 25-Pound - $8 (37 servings) Great Value Powdered Milk 4-lbs - $16 (64 servings) Zulka Morena Pure Cane Sugar, 8 lbs - $5 (128 servings) Great Value: Vegetable Oil, 1 Gal - $5 (64 servings) Augason Farms Iodized Salt, 104 oz - $5 (623 servings) Amazon: Bob's Red Mill Gluten Flour Pack of 4 of 22-ounce each - $23 (83 servings) The Ready Store: SAF Premium Yeast 16oz - $7 (48 servings) Note: Per 1 serving denotes 1 loaf of 1.5 lb bread. So per serving of all combined ingredients above costs me $1.012! (Savings: $1.488). So in less than 2 months, I already made back the cost of the bread machine. So after that and 28 months later today - this breadmaker is still baking strong even after roughly 500 loaves of bread (20+/- loaves a month) with a total saving of around $700+. That said, we felt better after a couple of months and lost some weight. Even our dog likes our freshly baked bread - note that she NEVER EVER touched the ones we bought from the store. Not to mention the great sensation of smelling the loaves you bake - it's freshness! And a dab of butter on a freshly cut loaf lifts up your morale even more! The other best thing about making your bread at home - you can go beyond that simple loaf of bread! Add nuts, add eggs, add spices. Turn it into pumpernickel. Turn it into hoagies. Into fresh baguette. Into basically...anything! I bought the "The Artisan Bread Machine" here in Amazon and delved into more creations. We can now make anything the fancy bakeries out there can make WITHOUT the unspeakable ingredients. Pros: * Durable * Can make a variety of loaves with your desired setting * It takes only around 5 minutes to dump in the ingredients then it mixes and bakes * Never failed to make the perfect loaf (only if you put in the correct ingredients in the correct order) Cons: * As it ages (more than 2 years old now), the non-stick coating is fading but that's to be expected * It doesn't do laundry Bottomline: If this breaks - I'm buying it again and hopefully the same quality as before. Worth the money and ROI pays off quickly. Better health knowing you know what goes in your bread > Priceless! ---------------------------------------- Update: 2/1/2017 After almost 4 years - we have to let go of this beloved bread machine of ours. Not because it stopped working, but because we once again have to move to a country of different voltage and would deem impractical to bring this along. So almost after 4 years - it is still working and will hopefully find a new home (donated to the VVA). Definitely, if I ever found the same brand, we're buying this again. This is a final revision of this review - This bread machine has given us wonderful bread (and some bad ones - our fault) and wonderful memories. And thank you for the helpful comments that helped us and others. Hope this would help more people in the future.