13 out of 13 people found this review helpful.
Tasty bread, speckled with Teflon flakes
Date of Review: Mar 23, 2008
The Bottom Line: If you like teflon in your bread, buy this product.
We had success making good bread using one of the many recipes included in the users manual. Add the ingredients, and you have fresh bread in 3-4 hours.
We have also used it to make non-standard recipes that we found online such as naan bread dough, and flavoured pizza dough etc. We've also used it to make french bread dough, and baked some baguette shaped loaves in the oven.
The unit is a bit noisy, but it doesn't wake us up at 3am if we set it up to have fresh bread ready in the morning. We have it in a room adjacent to our bedroom (condo with open layout).
The baking profile is fairly even. One side always seems to be a bit browner than the other, but in general it is pretty good. We found that it really helps to manually reshape the loaf after the final rise, otherwise it tends to be a bit lopsided.
Teflon contamination was a concern when we purchased this product, but we never could have imagined it being as bad as it is. Here are the two major design flaws:
1. The paddle is teflon coated, and there is a bit of `play` between the motor shaft and the paddle. We had to discard several loaves of bread because thick grey teflon goo contaminated the bread. Now that it has mostly scraped off, we don't see it.
2. The teflon coating in the bread pan started to visibly wear after 4-5 loaves. Now after 20 or so loaves, the teflon is literally peeling away and ends up in the bread.
All in all, it is a good breadmaker. But if you are concerned about ingesting teflon coatings, then stay away from this breadmachine, and probably all bread machines. Instead, consider using a mixer to prepare bread dough. That way you can use all stainless steel components and avoid the teflon.
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