West BendHi-Rise Bread Maker Machine Programmable 12 Programs Including Gluten Free & 3 Loaf Sizes and Crust Colors with Traditionally-Shaped Horizontal Bread Pan with Dual Knead Blades, 3-Lb, Gray

Just received yesterday, made my 1st loaf 2lb, basic bread today. Wow I am impressed, this machine is so easy to operate. I had a magic chef, it finally bit the dust. Love to be able to choose size of bread. It looked great, but most important, was delicious. I do make bread from scratch, so not a novice at baking bread. This makes it too easy. No more from "scratch". I am a person whom could live on good homemade bread. This West Bend is a keeper by all means.

I almost returned this bread machine.I loved the size of the loaves it makes and the double paddles. I originally bought it because my other (4 yr old) “artisan” bread machine couldn’t mix raisins into dough without me standing over it with a wooden spoon, helping. Haven’t tried raisin bread with this one yet but I’m sure the 2 paddles will help. I wanted to see how it does with the basic white, first. I live at over 3,000 ft. elevation, so while not that high, it’s high enough to mess up baked goods. There are always altitude adjustments needed. Also, looking around online and measuring it myself, I found there are many different answers to how many grams are in a cup of bread flour. I found a range of 120 to 166 grams per cup. That’s quite a range when you need 4 cups and precision is important. After several test loaves, I found 135g/cup for the bread flour I use, to be the perfect amount and as it turns out that is what West Bend says on p.9 in the user manual.I ended up trying the custom settings, Menu 11, since I wasn’t all that thrilled with the test loaves to that point. They seemed to not rise as high as I thought they should and seemed too brown on the sides for my taste. So, using 135g bread flour per cup and reducing the yeast by 1/4 tsp because of my altitude, I increased kneading and rising times and reduced baking time. The loaf came out just how I wanted it. Couldn’t ask for more. I was actually quite surprised that changing the times on the various cycles could make such a huge difference in the final loaf, but it does.The reason I was going to return it was that the pan is pretty hard to pull out of the machine when the bread is done. Since the bread is so good (after you put in a little effort to get it the way you want it) and I like the other features (pan size, double paddles, size and overall look of the machine, nice viewing window, easy to read screen) not found in other machines at this fantastic price point, I decided to keep it and I’m very happy I did.Update: Added raisin bread pic.

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.

Why didn't I have this years ago? I love this thing and have been baking 1-2 loaves a week since getting it. It's very easy, and I had good success from the very first loaf. The think I like most, is that this makes a horizontal loaf more like a commercial loaf. It does a 2lb loaf, but you can also do a smaller 1.5lb. loaf if you don't want it quite so tall. So far, I have baked white, wheat, and fruit breads. The cleanup of the pan is very easy, and the paddles come out easy (or you can removed them prior to the baking) if you catch it in time. I do like to remove the paddles if possible because they dent the bread, but this is the case on all bread machines.Build seems sturdy, size is fairly compact, and has many settings. Cleans up well. All in all, a good starter machine.