Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Hamilton Beach Bread Maker Machine, Digital, Programmable, 12 Settings + Gluten Free, Dishwasher Safe Pan + Kneading Paddle, 2 lb Capacity, Black (29882)

Top positive review

So much better than I expected...

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2022

I love this bread machine. I spent hours online looking at the different choices and reading the reviews -- negative and positive. I put it in my cart so many times, then left it there and came back a few times before finally hitting the "buy" button. The negative reviews really had me apprehensive. But since I've never baked a loaf of bread before, I thought I'd start with this one, and if it was a dud, I'd try a more expensive one.

This was really "plug and play". It's ready to go right out of the box. I took the advice found in the positive reviews which was (1) read the manual from start to finish before trying out the machine and (2) make sure your measurements are exact and you follow the instructions and do everything in the right order. Weigh out the ingredients first and have them sitting on the counter ready to put in the machine before you turn on the machine.

I read the manual twice (not all at once). I decided to try an easy white bread first. I went out and bought "bread machine" flour and since I couldn't find "bread machine yeast" I just got some fast-rising yeast. The recipes say "vegetable oil or butter" and since I never use vegetable oil (or any seed oil -- only olive oil) I used unsalted butter instead.

It was so simple it almost felt like cheating.

As to all the things I was fearing from the negative reviews: The machine is really quiet, compared to a blender or vitamix or food processor. It would not wake someone up in the next room let alone disturb an apartment neighbor.
The machine did not walk off my counter or fall on the floor. It has four rubber feet that keep it in place -- it moved about 2-3 inches a few times and I just pushed it back. (Intially I put it on a ribbed cotton placemat but I removed it after a while since it didn't seem necessary and it actually moved less without it.

I could tell the bread was rising nicely looking in the top window. When it started the baking stage (last stage) I could smell it in another room and went to see if anything was burning, but no, it was just some some air vents in the machine that let out some steam.

When the bread was done I let it stay in the machine for about 15 minutes. I took out the bake pan, turned it upside down over a wire rack, and the bread fell right out. Nothing stuck to the baking bucket.
This unit doesn't come with a paddle removal tool, and the paddle did stay in the bread, so I took the screw part of a corkscrew and gently probed the bottom of the bread and it came out pretty quick with just a little hole in the bottom.
I had set it on the medium crust level and the bread was browned perfectly.
It rose really nicely.
The bread was crusty on the outside and the white bread inside was not stiff or hardened.
I sliced a piece off, tasted it and thought it had a really good, rich flavor. I put some peanut butter and jelly on it and put the rest in a plastic bag and left it on the counter overnight. This morning, I sliced a piece off, and it was still tender inside. (Meaning if you put you pushed your finger into it, it would create a small dent and then bounce back, or at least not tear). I cut it in half and toasted the halves. The toast came out great, evenly browned and I a scrambled egg on it.

At dinner, a friend came over and tasted it and even though he's not a white bread kind of person, he thought it tasted really good.

One of the reasons I went with this model was because it's dishwasher safe. But the pan was still so clean after baking the bread, all I did was take a dampen a clean dish towel and wipe the inside. Nothing stuck to the inside housing of the machine so I just ran the damp cloth over it and let the top up so it would dry fully.

I know this is a long review, but I had so much angst from the 180 degree difference between the positive and negative reviews, I thought it might be helpful to another beginner like me who is struggling to make sense of the reviews. It's not that I disbelieve the negative reviewers -- I've certainly gotten appliances I thought had been previously returned or were duds for other reasons. But I am so happy with this machine so far, I really wanted to share it.
I'm going to do rye bread next.
PS If in the next 6 months, the machine falls apart or fails to perform properly or the non-stick surface comes off into the bread, I'll come back and update.

1,020 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

tiaandlevismom

Slides around on countertop

Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2024

There’s a couple of things about this machine. One is that the recipes are written backwards and the instructions say to follow them in order. If you follow them in order you end up with chunks of flour and the bread doesn’t bake properly. You have to keep an eye on your dough when it is first starting out because it doesn’t always mix properly even when you put the ingredients in the right way. For some reason there is always flour in the corners that you have to scrape into the ball of dough that is mixing. These are not too hard to fix. The biggest issue I have is that when it gets going mixing it wants to slide all over the countertop. Several times I have walked into the kitchen to find my machine half way off of the countertop. I have never had a machine that I had to babysit so much in my life. The other machines I have had I would just set it and forget it until it went off. I will most likely get a different one and give this one away.

19,270 total ratings, 5,522 with reviews

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From the United States

jemmedia

So much better than I expected...

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2022

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

1,020 people found this helpful

Helpful

Zen

First time making bread, and I can't believe how nice it turned out with this machine!

Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2016

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

I have never baked bread in my life, but I've always wanted to bake my own bread, and now with this machine I can. It makes it very simple to produce great loaves. I've had it for a week so far and I've baked 3 loaves already and although I'm still in the trial and error phase, all my loaves were great tasting and I was very pleased. I'm including pictures of the 3 breads I baked - a whole wheat bread with cumin (fragrant and wholesome, a little dense as I used regular yeast instead of bread machine yeast), a white sour cream bread (soft and delicious, like French toast from the Bread Machine Cookbook) and a White buttermilk bread (soft and delicious). I cannot believe how fresh and good the bread tastes and it's great to go out for Holiday shopping and come back to the smell of freshly baked bread.

This machine is pretty consistent and I haven't had to do a thing after putting in all the ingredients.

Some things I learned so far:
- Don't mess with the machine, don't open the lid.
- Mix ingredients on counter in the pan then snap it in the machine, otherwise you can risk dropping some ingredients on the heating element and it will burn.
- Measure precisely, don't guess. Use cup and spoon measures.
- Don't put too much liquid, or pack the flour in the cup too much, or put in too much yeast. The bread machine cookbook suggested too much yeast for most recipes and one 2 lb loaf just rose up against the glass lid and the top was underbaked. Fleishmann's website suggests just 1/2 tsp of bread machine yeast per cup of flour but the bread machine cookbook suggests a bit more and the bread rises too much! It's best to bake a 1.5 lb loaf in this machine when you're first trying a recipe as it comes out with a nicer crust, and you give some margin in case the dough rises too much!
- Once you've got the hang of it, which you will pretty quickly, do experiment. I already tried cumin in one loaf with great success, and look forward to trying all kinds of nuts, seeds, flavorings.
- Keeping bread in a plastic bread box on the counter keeps it fresh, I found a transparent shoe box at the Depot that is doubling perfectly as a bread box.

I am so pleased with this machine and looking forward to trying more recipes and creating my own!

1,198 people found this helpful

Helpful

canonwren

The bread is good

Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2021

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

This is the second breadmaker of this type I have purchased. The older one was purchased in 2011 and still works! The motor was groaning a bit during mixing so I bought this newer Hamilton Beach of the same type and brand. The bread is tasty and the hole from the paddle is small. It can be set to bake later, so you can wake up in the morning or when you arrive home, to a fresh loaf of bread. Clean up is simple. The pan rinses clean easily. Pictured is my first loaf from the newer bread maker. It is a 1.5 lb. rum-raisin loaf from a recipe I've had for some time. The raisins were soaked in rum overnight before adding them to the loaf when it beeped to add nuts, raisins or other add ins. There are just 2 of us in the household now so making the smaller loaf makes sense for us. You simply put in all the liquids first, then all other ingredients leaving flour an lastly the yeast. Make a little divot in the bread flour and then put in your yeast. I used bread machine yeast. Select your loaf size (1.5 or 2 lb), darkness wanted (light, medium, or dark) and press start unless you want to delay bake. When done there are a series of beeps and the loaf literally slides out of the pan when you tip it (using mitts). I use a metal crochet hook to pull out the small paddle (though you can buy a paddle removal tool that looks exactly like a crochet hook.) As you can see, the loaf is slightly horizontal and once somewhat cool can be sliced easily. Slices do fit in a standard toaster. The bread is somewhat larger dimensions than a standard sandwich bread load and you will need a bread bag from wider loaves you may buy in the store for storage. This loaf and most I've made in the past, slice easily and crust is a bit crunchy. You will want a good bread knife or other serrated knife. I find you can slice them quite thinly if you want to limit the amount you eat at each sitting. Quite a few recipes come with the machine and many I have made in the past with the previous machine. I haven't really had a failure. In addition you can make dough using the dough cycle and fashion rolls or brioches from the dough that will just need the last rise. I keep a sourdough starter and found a wonderful sourdough cinnamon roll recipe online. I do know how to make breads from scratch. In the summer when I am really busy this machine is handy to make delicious FRESH bread. Note that your home will smell wonderful. There are more expensive machines, but this model has worked well for me over many years and I can recommend to any who just want good fresh bread the easy way. Also there is the gluten free button (I do have a grandson who tries to avoid gluten). Give this reasonably priced machine a shot. It works well.

71 people found this helpful

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sadie

Improved performance with adjustments

Reviewed in the United States on June 26, 2023

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

Worked well enough for the first year. Nothing really works by year-two. For example, the dough cycle does not make usable dough now ... just a soupy mess. Basic bread cycle? It can't get past just making more "soup." I always weigh (and have always weighed) the flour and use fresh ingredients but to no improved effect.

The first "Rate Features" is "Easy to use." Zero stars reflect the fact that there is no "use" to rate.
The second one is "Easy to clean." This gets 5 stars because it really is easy to clean, both before when it actually made dough and finished bread and now when it produces "soup."
The third one is "Timer function." Zero stars reflect the fact that the machine is malfunctioning, and I don't know whether that is because of the timer or not.

I would not recommend it, which is a shame, because I've had good luck with other Hamilton Beach small appliances in the past and had high hopes for this bread maker.

Update: I decided that I would try again before admitting defeat. The unit came with two paddles, so I swapped out the one that I'd been using for the unused one in case there was an issue as to whether the paddle was seating well enough to mix ingredients. I switched back to regular yeast instead of bread-machine yeast. This try was more successful. I will keep the unit because it makes a good basic white bread, which is what I bought it for originally anyway.

44 people found this helpful

Helpful

HotTam

Easy to Use Some Experience Required

Reviewed in the United States on November 12, 2022

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

This is a nice bread maker, worth the price. I have made bread periodically before so I know what a loaf should look like generally I.e., too wet or too dry. I was afraid to deviate from the instructions but decided to do this for my raisin loaf and I had good results.

The machine did not alert me to when to add the raisins so you need to read the instructions and add them at the correct time.

Four observations:

1. Do not follow the recipes that come with it that involve the “ml” amounts. They are grossly off, especially the raisin bread recipe. The flour asked for was not enough, I needed to add more slowly during the first round of kneading. Your dough should not look like cookie dough.

2. Feel free to add more flour as it is kneading. The raisin bread recipe is too wet as written. Feel free to scrape down sides with a rubber scraper during kneading as well.

3. Remove dough and paddle directly after last kneading cycle onto a floured surface. Do this quickly so as not to cut into last rising time. This is a good time to add more flour if needed and give it a little kneading and shape. Place the loaf right back on the paddle spike. You will need to soak the bread off of the spike when cleaning but it is worth not digging the paddle out of the loaf!

4. Get a cookbook for bread machines! This comes with some basic recipes and that is it.

This machine lets you fiddle with things if you want to. I can’t wait to make more in this machine!!

Remember loafs only last three days at room temperature and ten days in a refrigerator. These loaves have NO preservatives which is great for our health, but spoil earlier than commercial loaves. Enjoy!

72 people found this helpful

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Ruth

Works well for a good price but WEIGH your flour

Reviewed in the United States on November 13, 2023

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

This is a review after just a couple weeks use because there are a couple of things you need to know: First, there is a big mistake in the recipe for basic white bread. They say 3 1/2 cups flour or 800 plus grams. 800 plus grams is WAY too much - almost double in fact. It should be 424 grams. But DO weigh your flour. I was amazed at how much less flour I ended up using and it makes a lovely loaf of bread. Second, the recipe doesn't tell you to use very warm water but you should do that. Hot tap is just fine. It helps the yeast enormously. Third, certainly add the ingredients in the order they are listed but once they are all in give them a few stirs BEFORE you put the "pan" into the breadmaker. This prevents the flour from puffing out into the oven well when the cycle starts stirring. Flour down there doesn't really hurt anything (as long as you clean up after use) but instead of the nice bread smell you will smell burnt flour.

I've gotten some really nice bread loaves so far - which improved in shape once I used these tips. Excellent bread for a fraction of the price of the spendier models which means you can afford to experiment a bit and decide if this is for you without breaking the bank.

18 people found this helpful

Helpful

Amazon Customer

I'll never buy store bread again.

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2018

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

I had no idea that bread machines were like crock pots. I just never looked into them or thought about buying one. But when I saw an article about them I came here to check them out. I'm glad I did. It could not be simpler: you put the ingredients into the bread maker in a particular order: liquids first, then sugar/salt/butter, then the flour on top of those. You DO NOT mix them. Then you make a small channel in the flour (not deep) and put the yeast in there. It's critical that the yeast not come into contact with the sugar salt or liquid. Then you close the machine, choose the type of bread you are making and the loaf size and press Start. That is it. The machine does everything. Three hours later you will have warm wonderful bread.

The actual baking time for the bread is an hour The rest of the time is spend kneading and allowing the dough to rise. That last hour makes your house smell wonderful! There are many recipes that come with this machine and they are very varied. I have tried the rye, white, and french so far and all have come out perfect. I made challah also, and while it was delicious bread, it did not taste like true challah to me.

I live alone so a large loaf of bread is a bit much. I know you can freeze it but any time I've ever tried that with packaged bread, I'd wind up throwing it out months later. The instruction booklet suggests that you use the exact ingredients listed and not to try to make smaller loaves. Today, I gave it a shot and halved the ingredients for the Light Rye recipe in the booklet. I set it to a medium crust and a 1.5 loaf and left it to run the entire cycle. I was going to stop it at 30 minutes into baking since it was half size but since it was just a test I left it. Boy am I glad I did. It came out perfect. Very crunchy on the outside and warm and soft on the inside. I was SO happy with the results because now I can make bread and not waste any ingredients. The photo accompanying this review is of the half size loaf of rye that I made. The defect look in the picture is because the paddle got baked into the loaf and it was a bit messy when I took it out. I cut the bread right out of the machine because I was dying to try it. I LOVE this breadmaker.

3 people found this helpful

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AF Michael

It's not the most expensive and it's not the cheapy version - but I like it.

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2020

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

I had thought to purchase the Cuisinart bread machine as I have several other of their products which I love, but it had so many not so great reviews, that I decided that the Hamilton Beach machine would be a good choice, as I still own a hand mixer that I purchased 40 years ago for $12.00 and it still works like a champ.
The worst part of this machine is the screen is not as easily read as my old Hamilton Beach bread machine - but it is quieter by light years than my old one was. Other than that...I love the way the dough pan goes in and out with just a twist - as opposed to the clips they used to have on the sides. It does a great job of cooking the bread.
I made a loaf of rye bread using the recipe that came with the book - the machine did great but the recipe was really rather bland and tasteless - were it not for the caraway seeds I wouldn't have known what I was eating. I made the Orange cranberry nut bread that was in their enclosed book - OH MY GOSH...it's fabulous and about 15 minutes ago, I baked a cornbread using the directions. I added some sugar to the recipe as we like sweet cornbread. I was surprised at how really pretty the loaf looks taking it out of the pan - it tastes every bit as good as it looks and having yeast in the mix really gave it a different kind of texture which is a nice surprise.

For the price of this machine you can't go wrong. Quiet, easy to use, easy to clean either in the dishwasher or by hand. I have an older recipe book for bread machine breads - and I'm going to go back to using those recipes - to see if I get more flavorful rye bread and wheat breads. I had the same problem with the basic wheat bread recipe that came with the machine - rather bland and tasteless. Worth a shot, though! In this day and age if the worse you can say about a bread machine is the recipes that come with it are lousy - you've got yourself a good machine to use for a long time. Between the book store and the internet - finding recipes is easier than ever before. Happy baking.

5 people found this helpful

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Mia

Great Machine especially for the price

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2018

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

I love this breadmaker! I was a little hesitant about it being Hamilton Beach because it was a Zoj or anything but for less than half the price of a Zoj it has been doing the job! I've used it for 2 weeks now and I love it (and so does my family)! I have been making bread almost every day for the past two weeks. This past weekend I was making 2 loaves a day because I was babysitting my sisters and kids and they kept asking for more bread. My first loaf, I did the delayed start option. I put in all the ingredients at 10:30pm (you can't use the delayed start option if the recipe calls for any dairy products. I still don't know if this includes dry milk but definitely for eggs or milk) and it was ready by 8am the next day. Here are some tips that I figured out while using it:

1. Delay Start Option: You need to take into account both the baking time and the time before the machine needs to start baking. Example: I put in my ingredients at 10:30pm and I wanted it to be ready by 7:30am the next morning. The baking time for that recipe was 3 hours so from 4:30am-7:30am it would begin baking and from 10:30pm - 4:30am is 6 hours so after selecting the cycle, crust and loaf size I set the delay start time to 9 hours (6 hours waiting time + 3 hours baking time).

2. Be sure to follow the recipes exactly. The manual and a lot of the recipes I found always say to put the liquids and salt and sugar first, flour then the yeast on top so that the yeast doesn't touch the salt. I am very particular in When measuring always pack the flour (dry products) and smooth it out on top. I made one recipe 3 times and the third time I made it the top sunk in and it was a little harder than the first 2 loaves. I think what happened was instead of using Active Dry Yeast I may have used Instant Yeast. I'm not much of a baker to know the difference but I think I grabbed the wrong one and it didn't rise completely. I have bread machine yeast but I only used it when the recipe specifically said Bread Machine Yeast.

3. The Paddle is a little hard to remove so I did notice there is a straight edge that needs to line up with the straight edge on the stick at the bottom of the pan but I still have a hard time removing it. You just have to keep twisting and lifting, sometimes I soak it in water for a bit and then try removing it. That is sometimes a little easier but I still have a little bit of a hard time. Also the hole on the bottom of the bread from the paddle isn't big at all. I've heard from some of my friends who had the old breadmaker machines that the hole would go through the hole loaf. This is not the case. It will probably only show on your last slice of bread and it's not really a hole, more of an indentation in the bread.

4. I kind of don't like that there isn't an OFF button so I just unplug it.

5. It is a little big on my counter-top but since it's black it's not an eyesore. I just don't like having too much stuff on my counter-tops so I'm still trying to find someplace to store it.

6. I really like that it has a window that you can see the dough through without opening the lid but you I also like that you CAN open the lid (when the window gets foggy from the temperature) without screwing up the process. My kids love this option too as they are so fascinated with seeing how the bread is kneaded and rises etc.

7. There is somewhat of a vibration during the kneading process but when I read about it in the manual I thought it would be like as if it were on a bumpy road and it could possibly fall off of my counter-top but it really isn't that bad. I'll update my post with pictures and a video later.

Overall, so far, I absolutely love my machine and so does my family! I love that we don't have to buy bread any more and the ingredients so far are lasting me about 1-2 weeks (of which I made bread at least once a day or every other day).

288 people found this helpful

Helpful

Thomas Blake

Satisfactory entry-level bread machine

Reviewed in the United States on August 6, 2019

Color: BlackVerified Purchase

My mother taught me how to bake bread when I was a kid, and in my adult life I did make tons of pizza dough commercially. But I'm not a home baker. Mom and her ilk, those people who can adjust baking recipes on the fly and have it come out right, are up to something shifty. I trust used car salesmen more than people who can do that.

But I'm a bachelor in my 30s, and the good bread is spendy. It came high time to accept that if I wanted fresh bread in my house, I was going to have to make it. Enter the Hamilton Beach 29882 bread maker. At $200 less than the cheapest celebrated Zojirushi, it represented a good entry-level option for me.

I have two issues with the instruction manual.

1. The quick start instructions say that before the first use, you should wash and try the bread pan and kneader dealy (naturally). The detailed instructions say to do that, then assemble the machine, run it on bake for 10 minutes, and then let them cool and wash and dry again. But nowhere else in the instruction manual does it mention that the machine is even capable of being set straight to bake, much less saying how to do it! I'm not going to sit for hours while the machine kneads nothing and lets that nothing rise just to reach 10 minutes of bake time. So I skipped that step and followed the quick start. Seriously though, I wasted a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to follow that instruction, and I work in technical support nowadays.

2. The recipes gave measurements by volume only. This is unacceptable. Of any raw ingredient I've ever encountered, flour is the most susceptible to huge variations in density based on who is doing the scooping. That's why when I'd get bored in the pizzeria and read the trade magazines, all the recipes used unitless weights where the amount of flour was 1.00 and everything else was proportional to that. Of course, in a 2 lb loaf, you can be more specific. So I used a "100% Whole Wheat Bread for the Bread Machine" recipe available on a flour vendor's website which listed the ingredients both by volume and weight. I'm glad I did, because my 397g of flour was a little less than 3 cups rather than the claimed 3 1/2 cups.

Anyway, the bread came out 3 hours later on the whole wheat cycle (#11) really nice. I haven't tried the delayed start, and I put my whole flaxseeds in at the start as the recipe suggested. Next time I'm making it right away I'll add the seeds when the machine does its can't-miss beeping to signal the time that it wants you to do that. I also didn't do the delayed start, but given that the timing was as expected I look forward to testing that feature out soon for waking up to fresh bread.

Taking the thingy out of the bottom of the loaf was a bit tricky. While I already knew there's gonna be a hole in the bottom of bread from a bread maker, hopefully my skills improve. I did follow the instruction to fill the pan before putting it in the machine, so I can't comment on if spilled ingredients are difficult to clean out of the machine itself.

I did bake this at 5000 feet. I didn't see anything in the instructions about adjusting for altitude, but the bread was fine. In fact, I only just thought of it; the Internet has some tips that I'll try next time and see if it improves from good to great.

6 people found this helpful

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Hamilton Beach Bread Maker Machine, Digital, Programmable, 12 Settings + Gluten Free, Dishwasher Safe Pan + Kneading Paddle, 2 lb Capacity, Black (29882)

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Hamilton Beach Bread Maker Machine, Digital, Programmable, 12 Settings + Gluten Free, Dishwasher Safe Pan + Kneading Paddle, 2 lb Capacity, Black (29882)

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