Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've never owned a bread machine until this one as I had heard that only the fancy $200-300 ones worked well. Well this one works GREAT and it hardly breaks the bank. I've used it now for several months and have gotten perfect bread every time - soft and fluffy. A few times I even totally messed up the recipe and the bread still came out edible, just not as great as usual. The manual it comes with has good and easy recipes in it. Actually you can download it from their site for free:(...) I've also googled recipes and tried them to great success. Among others, I've tried basic white, cheddar cheese, whole wheat, sweet hawaiian, oatmeal buttermilk, parmesan, rosemary - all came out great. Even a boxed beed bread mix from Trader Joe's turned out fine. I especially love the delay timer feature as most breads take about 3 hours so I like to go to bed and time it so it's just ready when I'm getting up. It's a nice smell to wake up to and not have to worry about making breakfast. To my great relief, despite baking pretty much every other day for almost the whole first month, my electricity bill did not change that much, so it must also be somewhat energy efficient. WARNING: the kneading paddle does tend to embed itself and come out with the baked bread (in other words, it gets stuck inside the bottom of the bread during baking so when you flip over the bread pan to get the bread out at the end, the paddle comes out with it and stays "stuck" inside until you remove it. Careful! The kneading paddle is all metal so it's super hot and to remove it I usually use a clean piece of paper towel or a spatula to pry it out. DO NOT FORGET THE PADDLE INSIDE!!!! If you do, when you start cutting the bread you will hit the paddle with your bread knife and likely scratch its nonstick coating making it unsafe for future use. I ruined both of my kneading paddles (the machine comes with two) that way and had to order a spare from the company (great customer service btw!). The only other downside is that it does make healthy eating habits harder to stick to. It's just SO easy to make tasty fresh bread and eat half of it that same day!!! I'm imagine that if you're on a diet this is just about the worst thing to have around! I am perfectly fine having chocolate and ice cream and other delicious unhealthy goodies around the house and not indulge too much at all, but with the bread it is much more difficult because it is a "staple" food so it's easier to just say "oh well it's part of a regular meal." So think carefully before you bring such temptation into your life! :)