West Bend Hi-Rise Bread Maker Programmable Horizontal Dual Blade with 12 Programs Including Gluten Free, 3-Pound, Gray

UPDATE 3I've found it's best to bake on the light setting, especially if you don't take it out as soon as it's baked and it goes into the warm mode. It has a tendency to over bake the bread, especially if it has a high sugar content. My favourite recipes that I found online are Hawaiian bread, Portuguese sweet bread, an Amish bread and Pain de Mie. The recipes from the manual aren't bad, just your regular type of bread. Our household has dairy and nut allergies so I just use olive oil, margarine, and soy milk (powdered and liquid) for recipes that use butter and milk and milk powder and while I don't know what the original dairy would have tasted like, the breads made with the substitutes have been good.UPDATE 2I've marked one side of the pan and that's the side of the pan that I align with the left side if facing front all the time. If you don't move the spindles when you take off the paddles then it will easily align. I soak my pan with water inside (not outside) so paddles are easy to remove.I bought a smaller bread size machine for making smaller than 2 lb loaves and realized that the West Bend tends to overbake the outside so best to use the light crust setting. This pan and paddles have held up better than the paddle of my newer machine which has lost some of the coating on the paddle in spots but the manufacturer sent me a replacement.UPDATEI've found an easy way to align the paddles so it fits into the machine easily. if you look at the bottom of the pan, you will see three small circles - looks like places where the bottom is attached, two on one side and one on the other. You have to align one of the paddles so that the tip of it is just touching the single round circle, then align the second so the position is similar that is both facing the same direction. You should then be able to add ingredients and snap pan in place. It works for my pan, hoping all pans are the same.I've tried the delay start and that's worked. I've also tried the custom, but there's one setting that you can't make 0, I think it was the second knead so if you only want one knead you are out of luck.I bought a used Oster breadmachine to see if I would like it - this was actually my second, my first bread machine I returned because it wouldn't turn on - many years ago and that turned me off the idea. Surprisingly the Oster worked well - it's one that makes 2.5lb breads but it's vertical. I've made numerous breads with it and most came out especially the ones in the manual. I wanted a more horizontal type loaf and also a larger bread. This machine is a lot smaller, just a little deeper than the Oster, but shorter. The pan is surprisingly small. I compared with the Oster and it's about 1.5" longer than the Oster's height.The Oster's display is easier to see because it's red lights, this one is standard black LCD display so it is hard to see in dim light. I'm trying it with the basic white 3lb bread recipe from the book. I had to add about 3 tablespoons of water to get it to form a ball - I used my own measuring cups and soy milk powder due to milk allergies, as well as oil instead of butter or margarine. The bread came out okay like regular bread. The light setting was good enough to get the bread nicely browned.I had slight difficulty getting on the paddles because the difference in shape is so slight it's hardly noticeable until you try to get it on! There is a very slight flat edge and this has to be aligned properly with the paddle's internal flat edge. The Oster has two distinct flat edges. The paddles are a lot smaller than the Oster's but they do a good job of kneading the dough. I found though that the dough tended to end up a little more on one side than the other - the manual says it's because it needed more water. I found it easy to insert the pan, just pushed it down straight and the counter it's on is quite high - not standard height. It's quiet too. The Oster can get a bit noisy and recently it's started to squeal sometimes.The manual is very skimpy on recipes, especially for the 3 lb size. I think there is one only and the rest 2.5 lb and not many of that either! The Oster came with several pages of recipes. The layout for instructions on how to setup the machine for baking is lacking - buried in a paragraph. The sequence is menu (to select 1 to 12), then color, then loaf size (MCL for easy recall). This is where the Oster's manual excelled, for every recipe it tells you exactly what setting to use. I don't know what the newer Oster manuals are like, but the old one is excellent.From what I've read online, you can't just double a 1.5 lb recipe to get a 3 lb bread, you have to adjust the yeast which is why it would have been nice to have more 3 lb recipes. With the recipe given the yeast was the same for a 2.5 lb loaf in the Oster.The true test would be to compare the same bread recipe baked in both I suppose.UPDATEI used the sweet bread setting and put in the ingredients for a 2lb banana bread from the Oster 5844 manual. The Oster has a longer cycle by about an hour. The Oster came out but I had to put the Westbend on the bake cycle since it wasn't baked at the end and this ended up carrying it to the same time that the Oster finished. The interior texture was the same as that from the Oster but the outside was hard. I had difficulty getting it out, I had to use a spatula and pry and then make space on the side for my fingers to get under the loaf to pry it out! The white bread I made before came out easily.I will try a comparison using the sandwich bread recipe in the Westbend and put it in the Oster and see how it comes out. With the Oster I can most often put in any recipe that I've found online and it works, the Westbend looks like it might be a bit finickier.UPDATEI made sandwich bread using the recipe in the book on Medium crust and it was good. I had trouble putting in the bread pan and realized it was because in washing the pan some bread had stuck to it so I rotated the spindle and it moved the location of the spokes on the bottom. I had to rearrange them so that it would fit between the uprights in the machine and once that was done it fit.

Our 30-year old Zojirushi bread maker finally broke. This West Bend had good reviews and was a good price. So far, we have made 4 of the recipes in the owner's manual. All of those loaves were excellent. This machine has way more settings than our old one. Take time to read the manual. You can't spray the pan with Pam, use a rough sponge, or put the pan in the dishwasher. It also calls for the water to be 80 degrees since there is no preheat feature. (That will be harder when using fresh milk but not a major problem once we figure out microwave times.) It also said to put 1/4 of any butter used in each corner of the pan which is different than just dropping a chunk in. When the loaf comes out of the pan, the bottom is tearing where the kneading paddles have been baked in. There is a tool to remove the paddles but it is still tearing. However, those chunks are very tasty. lol. Remember to check the loaf size, 2, 2-1/2 or 3 pound as it will default to the previous setting. We have baked everything on Medium crust and they look great. The unit is deeper than our old one so we had to rearrange the cupboard for it to fit sideways, again not a major problem. Our old recipes max out around 3 cups of bread flour. This one can take almost double that but the loaves are way bigger. We will have to adjust our favorite recipes to make larger loaves. (The smaller loaves don't fill the entire pan and come out a little lopsided. The larger loaves are very symmetrical and look like they came from a bakery.) We had to get a larger airtight container to keep these big loaves in, again not a major problem. The see-thru lid is great. So is the count down timer. Cleaning the inside hole of the paddles was challenging until we got a bottle brush. Now any baked on dough comes completely out of the hole where the paddles attach. The West Bend did not get 5 stars in all categories but that's probably due to our learning curve. We can recommend this unit and would buy it again. Enjoy.

Having a Celiac in the house means you don't buy regular bread.And store-bought GF bread is expensive.I have made GF bread at home many times, with mixed results, but I was really looking for a way to make it a little easier.After a good bit of research, I settled on this machine.We use it exclusively for GF bread (of course) so my review pertains only to that mode.Pros:- The GF program does NOT have a second kneading, which is essential for GF bread- The Bake program allows you to add baking time, which you will need (see below)- The Custom program allows you to set up your own combination of kneading, rising, and baking, within certain limits (see below)Cons:- The longest baking time on the GF mode is 70 mins (3lb dark loaf); this isn't long enough for GF bread, so you'll have to switch to the Bake program and bake the bread longer- I have a feeling the machine bakes somewhat lower than 350, so it takes a long time to get the inside fully baked- The Custom program was the reason I bought this machine, thinking I would come up with the perfect program for GF bread; unfortunately there are several limitations that prevent this from being as great as I had hoped; read on- You cannot entirely eliminate the second kneading from the Custom program; you can set it to "0" mins, but it still spins the paddles once when it gets to that point in the process; that is enough to knock all the air out of the dough and ruin the GF bread; I tried working around this by setting KNEAD1 and RISE1 to the shortest times possible, then starting the machine empty and adding the ingredients at the beginning of KNEAD2- The longest baking time on the Custom program is 80 mins, which is not long enough; so you'll still have to use the Bake program to bake it longer- The machine does not save your settings on the Custom program; if you unplug the machine longer than 5 mins (who would leave a bread machine plugged in all the time?) the Custom program reverts back to the default settings; I suppose a person would get pretty quick with setting up the Custom program after doing it many times, but it's a small hassle that I think will lead most people to just use on of the other programsOverall, this machine does make pretty good GF bread.You'll have to scrape down the sides during the mixing, smooth the top out when it's done mixing, spray the top with cooking spray, and bake it for an additional 30-50 mins when the program is finished.With that in mind, and the right recipe, we have enjoyed the loaves made in this machine.West Bend was smart to offer a GF program with only one mixing, but they could have made a five-star machine by allowing longer baking times and a few important changes to the Custom options.

First use was using the old fashioned bread recipe from the manual. I forgot to change the setting for loaf type, so it actually used the French bread timer - the loaf turned out perfectly (ate half the loaf while still hot before I remembered I wanted a picture 😆). Today I used an online recipe for whole bread bread. This time, I forgot to change the setting to 2lb loaf, so it ran the 2.5lb cycle - again, the loaf was perfect.Excellent crust for both loaves - white was light crust, whole wheat was medium darkness. Great chew, tender inside. The whole wheat did not rise near as much, stopping ~ 1" from top of pan. The white bread was well above the edge, close to 1.5". The white bread made excellent toast. I'm guessing the wheat will as well.During the final rise, I lift the ends of the dough to remove knead paddles, then shape the dough to the pan. This allowed for easy loaf removal from pan without tearing large holes. I found the loaf can still stick to the spindles, but I simply turn the spindle from the bottom of the pan a couple times, and the loaf comes right out. It's all hot, so be careful.Very happy with this machine. It makes excellent bread, seems very forgiving for small hiccups (I still measure VERY carefully, which I believe to be critical, regardless), it cleans up super fast, and it's fairly quiet. It does cause a good shake on a free standing sideboard, but stays put. No issues with movement or shake on quartz counter.I highly recommend this machine.

New machine used for delayed bake raisin bread for the morning. Followed the 2.5 lb. recipe book instructions precisely. Woke up expecting some nice bread to toast but instead the loaf has risen so high it was crammed up against the lid and that part was uncooked. After some cooling & delicate surgical extraction got the loaf out of the pan - cut the uncooked top portion from the loaf & stuck in the oven to bake some more as the middle still had portions of unbaked dough. The saved loaf was delicious so not a total waste of time - but what a hassle. I don't know why the machine did this but will try the 2 lb. raisin bread next time & see how that goes as it uses less volume of ingredients - fingers crossed. Otherwise the loaf colour, loaf coming out of pan, etc. was good & machine otherwise seemed to work well. The last similar large bread maker we had continually had a problem with one of the dual paddles coming off so it couldn't knead properly as the dough would end up on the side with the dislodged paddle & the mission was then doomed. Oddly enough the design of the new machine's pan, paddles, etc. is almost identical - but I'm hoping for better results.