Brand new 🎉 Sunbeam Programmable Bread Maker, White 😀

2 reviews for Brand new 🎉 Sunbeam Programmable Bread Maker, White 😀

1. 

   Rated 4 out of 5

   Frau Schott – October 11, 2006

   Not having owned a bread machine before, I did my online research and decided to try a reasonably priced “good-enough tester” machine… Well, I’m VERY glad that I decided to purchase this “more-than-good-enough” model!This particular model is reasonably quiet while in operation, beeps after the 1st rest to indicate that it’s time to add the nuts/raisins, etc., and beeps after the baking cycle is completed (if the bread is not removed from the machine as soon as it’s done, it might lose moisture during the auto keep-warm cycle). I’ve twice made the following recipe with pine nuts and twice made pistachio-raisin bread (from “the Big Book of Bread Machine Recipes”)–delicious.The best part about this machine baking process is that it’s not at all difficult in any way. Here is the typical baking process: Warm the liquid in a glass measuring cup in a microwave, stir in the salt/honey/sugar/butter in the warm liquid, pour the mixture into the baking pan, place the pan on the scale, adjust the scale to zero, add the required flour (1 cup flour = 4 to 4.5 oz), level the flour, add the yeast, twist to lock the pan into the breadmaker, plug in the breadmaker, select the crust color (best to try the “Light” color first), select the baking setting, after about 5 min. check the dough and add water/flour if necessary (very important step), remove the bread to a cooling rack as soon as it’s done, then wipe the baking pan when it’s cool enough. (It’s helpful to have a portable timer on you to remind you to remove the bread, wherever you might be.)The clean up is SO MINIMAL that the bread tastes just that much better! And, whenever we want oven-baked loaves, I’d simply use the breadmaker’s dough cycle to lessen the clean up and do the rest as usual.However, there are some negative aspects related to this bread machine:1. The user manual is very uninformative for a new user, so don’t even bother. Instead, buy “The BIG Book of Bread Machine Recipes” by Donna Rathmell German (on Amazon; 600 recipes from 5 of her bread machine cookbooks) or other bread machine cookbooks and rest assured that the resulting loaves will be enjoyable and varied.2. On my machine, I had to make sure to select the “light” color, else the loaf gets too brown/too thick crusted.3. So far, all 4 loaves have slightly caved/sunken/deflated as soon as the baking cycle kicked in. Although the loaves are just slightly sunken, and the appearance and taste were not affected in any way, I will try using less liquid than normal (for a firmer dough) or less yeast (to slow the dough expansion process for this machine) to prevent the sunken look next time.Useful tips for new bread machine user:1. Get a dependable scale, instant-read thermometer, and a liquid measuring cup–approximations might not work well when you’re new at using bread machines.2. For the basic cycle, if baking the bread right away, you can just place all the ingredients right into the baking pan regardless of the liquid-first order stated on the manual.3. If adding additional flour/liquid to the baking pan, add carefully. Any spilled gunk on the bread machine’s bottom or heating element might take some scrubbing if baked in.4. If additional kneading time is desired, just stop and restart the machine for additional gluten development/knead time.5. For the initial confidence-building 2-pound loaf, try this tested recipe (might have to set your Sunbeam to “Light” color): 1 1/3 cups milk and/or water, 2 tb honey/sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 2 tablespoons butter, 4 cups bread flour (I used Gold Medal unbleached all-purpose), 1 1/2 teaspoons active yeast, 1/4 – 1/3 cup of pine nuts/other chopped nuts (optional). Remember to check the dough consistency after about 5 minutes and add liquids/flour if too wet or too dry.6. If the bread dough is over-rising at the top of the bake pan, either:a. simply scoop some dough carefully off the top, put the extra dough in a greased baking vessel of suitable size. Let dough rise a bit in the oven with the pilot light on, take dough out, preheat the oven at 350F-375F, spray some water in the oven to encourage crust formation, and then bake until the top is golden brown (internal temp. of about 180F to 200F); bake the other portion in the bread machine as usual; -OR-b. remove dough from the machine completely– separate the dough into two greased baking vessels of suitable size. Let dough rise a bit in the oven with the pilot light on, take dough out, preheat the oven at 350F-375F, spray some water in the oven to encourage crust formation, and then bake until the top is golden brown (internal temp. of about 180F to 200F).7. Store bread in the freezer for fresh-tasting bread any time: divide the bread into serving portions, place in Ziplock bag(s), suck out/remove the air (but don’t crush the bread), and store in the freezer; defrost (in the bag) in room temperature (or wrap the bread in a moist paper towel and microwave for a few seconds) before devouring. Make life even easier–bake extra loaves and freeze them.Conclusion: If you like the taste of “just-baked” breads, but don’t like the messy cleanups and the typical baking-related efforts => well, this one is worth the try, and it is worth the price. Just remember to get a bread machine recipe book and enjoy all the possibilities. Great machine!Additional info (8/5/12): I now own two of this — this review was for the first one, purchased from Amazon, for $40 at that time; the second one might have been purchased from Walmart a few months later for a few dollars more.

2. 

   Rated 5 out of 5

   M. Cordoba – February 13, 2012

   First I must admit I am a complete novice. I had never even baked cookies in my life.However, I wanted to eat some fresh bread, and healthier bread (I don’t like that store breads have like 20+ ingredients)So I researched for a relatively inexpensive breadmaker to try it out.I have only used it 5 times, but wow, I am thoroughly impressed. I was a little overwhelmed with the comments of users and my research that said how important it was to have exact measurements, some people claiming to use a scale instead of measuring cups to get exact numbers, and how a little more or less: sugar, salt, yeast could cause terrible consequences, etc, etc.I am not here to judge bread experts, since I am a complete novice, but in my 5 loaf experience, I have found the statements above to be false.By mistake I added 1/4 of a teaspoon more to a recipe (active dry yeast and instant yeast have a 1.25 conversion rate according to most sites) and the bread came out just fine.On another bread I added a about 1/3 of a cup more liquid (pineapple juice for a very good pineapple bread) and it came out just fine.Oh, I also tried a glutten free bread for a recipe that wasn’t for a breadmaker, and the bread came out fine still. Sure it wasn’t a perfect rectangle/square, it looked rustic and was as fluffy as any glutten-free bread I’ve ever tried.In general, I love the ease of use, and don’t let bread experts scare you away with those pesky exact measurements. Just try to keep it within what the recipes call for, but you don’t have to use any fancy scales or worry about an extra gram of salt falling in the pan.The machine talks about a precise order of ingredients – this too does not matter at all if you’re making the bread right away. Feel free to put the yeast first with the liquid, in fact you can let it “activate” even if its instant if you want, then add the flour, or add the flour first and then the liquid – again none of this matters at all. However, it could be a good practice to do the liquid->dry->yeast order for when you want to use the time delay feature – its only important then.Also, did I mention this product is super easy to clean? The convenience is simply great.The only negative thing I can say about this machine is that the LCD is of very poor quality, and you can barely read it under a bright kitchen light.A few more notes:- Using a kill-a-watt to test it, the machine uses between 3 and 6 cents of electricity in the “basic setting” in almost 3 hours, depending on peak hours and settings. So- Whole Wheat bread flour is awesome – makes incredibly fluffy bread! (Even my local supermarket carried it – WINCO for those in the northwest)So what did a complete novice bake successfully?- The super cheap but good white bread. (costs about $0.38 cents to make a 1.5lb loaf, including electricity. Even cheaper if you used all purpose flour, but I have liked my results with bread flour so I’ll be sticking with it – specially the whole wheat one). White bread flour, water, a little salt, yeast. Used the basic setting, and medium crust color.- Pineapple bread (I decided to add half a cup of pineapple in addition to what the recipe specified, and it turn out just fine). Whole wheat bread flour, sugar, pineapple juice, butter, 1 egg, yeast. This one was about 1.10 or so to make (most of the cost from the pineapple for the juice and fruit, fruit is expensive :/. But you can easily make this with just pineapple juice and that would take the cost down to like 75 cents per 1.5lb loaf.- Glutten free bread (glutten free bread mixture, soy milk, salt, sugar, yeast, 1/2 cup of eggs (2 full eggs, 2 egg whites)- (update) Banana bread (it was gone in less than 24 hours, and it was made with brown sugar and whole wheat bread flour on the “cake” setting on the machine)- (update) Whole wheat honey bread – really good and filling.All 5 turned out really good. I cannot say enough good things about the whole wheat bread flour. You can easily substitute it 1:1 in any recipe that calls for flour/white bread flour/all purpose flour. Well, I cannot say that with certainty, but I did substitute it 1:1 after doing some research and the result was just fine in all 3 loaves I tried that on.Conclusion: even a novice can make great fresh bread.Note: I will update this as I make more loafs. But so far, despite the poor LCD, this is a great investment of $50 dollars. (as of February 2012)Updated on 2/20/12 with more recipes.