Sunbeam 5891 2-Pound Programmable Breadmaker, White
by Sunbeam
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List Price: Our Price: $51.54 You Save: $34.51 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $47.42 (click here) Category: Kitchen See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Sunbeam 5891 2-Pound Programmable Breadmaker, White
Customer Review: Excellent entry level breadmaker but plan on replacing it soon
Summary: 5 Stars
With the cost of bread going through the roof I thought I'd investigate making my own bread. I chose this bread maker because it's very cheap and gets good reviews. I've never owned one before and I'm not a baker.
I started with a bread mix from the local grocery store. Not much cheaper than buying the bread but a good way to start. When I turned the machine on it was obvious there was something wrong with it. There was a dreadful sound everytime the dough hook turned as if something was slipping inside. The bread came out very well but I had to return the machine to the store to get a new one. Lost half a star right there.
I then tried a loaf using bulk ingredients. Much, much cheaper that way but still very easy. Just chuck the wet ingredients in, then the dry, and finally add the yeast into a hole you poke into the flour. Set the bake type (nearly always basic), chose the darkness and loaf size (1.5 or 2lbs) and hit the on button. Three hours later you have bread.
There are a couple of dough types the breadmaker struggles with - I can hear the motor groaning to turn the hook. I doubt I'll get more than 20-30 loaves out of this machine before it, too, dies. However the important thing is that I know I enjoy making bread and when it does die I'll happily spend $100 or so on a better machine.
The bread that comes out is fantastic (but it doesn't poke out the top like in the picture, thank goodness). The machine is very easy to clean although I do have to soak the loaf tin in water overnight to get the dough hook off. It comes with a weird hook thing that I assume is to pull the dough hook off with but it doesn't work.
The book that comes with it is minimal and only has a sample recipe for each of the 12 or so bake settings. I purchased an extra book for recipies but, quite honestly, they're all kind of intimidating. Great if you want to bake bread in the shape of a swan but not what I'm looking for. When I want something, say raisin bread, I just go to the Internet for recipies. They've all been good so far.
One feature that is missing is a beeper to indicate that the first kneading is over and you can add extra ingredients such as raisins, cheese etc. Not really a big deal, I just listen for the kneading sound to finish.
And yes - I'm saving a ton of money, especially now I'm buying my ingredients in bulk. And, again, the bread is better than any 'artisan' bread from the supermarket bakery.
Update: It's now Nov 2009 and the bread machine is still working. It outlived my expectations. Also I found the fruit setting has a beep for raisins or whatever after the first knead cycle so I was wrong on that one. I use it a lot to make pizza dough now. I gave it the full five stars because it's darn good value for money.
Customer Review: Great bread machine at a bargain...
Summary: 5 Stars
I've always been thinking about buying a bread machine, but didn't actually do it partially due to the price of bread machines, that I thought costs a lot. Until one day I saw this Sunbeam on sale for little money. I immediately bought one, as even if it doesn't work well, I don't lose much.
Well, ends up this machine is definitely worth more than what I paid for! After about 50 loaves, I can tell you this is definitely a fully functional bread machine that can make great breads. Yes, I had failures, but I don't blame the machine for it. Great breads require accurate measurement of ingredients and even proper temperature. The machine itself really is very low tech, just motor + oven combination that mix the ingredients, idle for risings, and heat up to bake. It assumes that you, the "master", put in the right amount of everything for it and select the correct Bread Type, Loaf Size, and Darkness with very few buttons on it. So, like many reviewers pointed out, good recipes are the key to great breads here.
I like this machine so much, I bought a 2nd one when it was on sale again. No, not as a house warming present. Just I now depend on it so much to make breads for my family everyday, that I'd really like to keep a backup. I don't buy bread/toast from grocery stores any more. So, in case the machine breaks, I can have the backup start making breads immediately. Not that I think this machine is going to break soon. From what I can see with my current one, I really doubt that I'll need the backup any time soon. But you never know... (Note, even if it breaks any time soon with the fact that I have made about 50 loaves so far, I already get my money worth from this bread machine, and will have no hesitation getting another one as backup immediately after promoting my backup as main one).
By the way, read the manual about how to take care of this machine. I didn't, and I soaked the bread pan in water after bake. And frequently, I got lazy and left the pan with full of water overnight. So one day after I put in all the ingredients trying to make bread, the machine refused to knead. I heard the motor tried to move, but no kneading. Turned out the knead blade assembly stuck completely, that the motor can't rotate it any more. It took me a while to get the assembly free to rotate again. Now I only wipe the pan clean and never soak it in water. I don't have any problem ever since.
I totally recommend this bread machine if you are in the market for one! And don't forget to grab a bread machine recipe book before you check out...
Customer Review: consistent good results
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had this breadmaker for a couple of years now and wanted to add my own experiences. I make bread every day or every other day but do not do much experimentation. I have probably made 200 or more loaves. I stopped buying store-bought bread a long time ago.
First off, the type of flour used has a big impact on the quality of the bread. From my reading, Canadian flours have more gluten than U.S. flours. For best results, I use Canadian Robin Hood flour, either their bread flour or their multigrain bread flour. With this flour, I get consistent results. If I use King Arthur flour, I have to add gluten to stop the bread from falling. So ... I always bring a couple of ten pound bags of Robin Hood flour back from our cottage in Canada for my bread making.
Secondly, I have never used the included recipe book ! I make a very simple, one-pound loaf of bread using the 1.5 pound setting. Just under a cup of water, 2 cups of flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar, 1 tsp bread machine yeast, 2 tablespoons olive oil (have also used 1 tbsp butter) ... and that's it. I like a textured bread, so if it's for my sandwiches, I throw in a handful of raw, shelled sunflower seeds and a handful of flax seeds. Since these are not ground, the amount of these seeds does not seem to affect the other ingredients. My wife likes her bread less textured, so I make loaves for her without all the seeds.
With King Arthur flour, I have to substitute some of the flour with gluten, usually 2-3 tablespoons. Without the gluten, the bread rises and falls. Even with the gluten, it makes a more dense loaf than with the Robin Hood flour. It tastes very good ... but is more dense.
Yes, the breadmaker is noisy. I hadn't really thought about it until I read all the negative reviews. It has never bothered me. I have a different branded breadmaker at our cottage up north, in which I use the same recipe, achieve the same results and it makes roughly the same amount of noise.
Since I've never even tried to make a 2 pound loaf, I have not had any jamming problems. My loaf, in fact, with all the additional seeds, is probably closer to a 3-cup loaf than a 2-cup loaf, i.e. 1.5 pounds.
Our neighbors at the cottage have the Sunbeam machine and are quite happy with it. I gave my daughter the same machine and it has performed beautifully. We have visitors who were looking to order the same machine which is why I went online to Amazon to check the price ... and found the negative reviews ... which were a surprise.
Customer Review: Great Value! Exceeds Expectations!
Summary: 5 Stars
When my Black & Decker All-In-One machine's paddle broke, I tried to find a replacement paddle, and found out that it would cost about $30. For a machine that is over 10 years old, I thought it would be silly to spend that kind of money when the machine itself might crash in a week.
So for Christmas my husband bought a BreadMan machine, on sale for about $80. I made two loaves, using the recipes in the manual, measuring carefully, and neither one were cooked all the way through. The shape of the pan seemed to need two paddles, yet it had just one. I promptly returned the machine, and sat down to look at the reviews. So many choices, and all of them had a number of people dissatisfied, and they were expensive!
Then I happened to see this at a local discount store. For under $60, it was the cheapest I'd seen, but I thought, hey, if I don't like it, I can easily take it back.
I love this machine! It does everything my "Deluxe" machine of ten years ago did, and more. The loaves come out nicely done, and I have used 4 different recipes, two from the internet, with great success, even with my "lazy" measuring and using regular flour, just as my old machine did.
The construction seems sturdy enough, comparable with my older machine. I don't like the twist necessary to load or unload the pan, but it is what I am accustomed to. It seems to operate well for the week in which I have had it. I am looking forward to trying other settings, as I've only tried the basic and the expressbake so far. I will update in a few months, once I see how it holds up.
My only three drawbacks, and they are minor: 1)I can foresee that the buttons will be hard to clean in the future, as they jut out. My older machine they were flush, with no crevices, which was nice. 2) The manual came with very limited recipes: 1 for each setting, basically. However, recipes from the internet seem to do well. 3) You basically get a cube when you make the 2 lb loaf, which makes it difficult to slice and portion, although it still tastes yummy!
Unless you really need the features of those high-end machines, get this one and save your money for flour!
ADDITION JANUARY 2011
This machine is still going strong. I love that the express bake only takes an hour, so if I decide I want bread for dinner I can just throw the ingredients in and have it. The basic bread recipe that takes 3 hours tastes better, though.
I would still HIGHLY recommend this product for the average user.
Customer Review: A great machine for the price
Summary: 5 Stars
I read all the negative reviews and for almost all, I had to say "true, happened to me". Except for the grease streaks from the paddle - never had that happen.
If the bread rises too much (too much yeast action), it falls. With some flours, or if your yeast is lazy, it doesn't rise enough. The machine can be really noisy, or not. Yes, there are some astonishing errors in the recipe, and after the instructions were emphatic about following the recipes strictly, well, that's not good.
But here's what I think. If you see an obvious mistake in a recipe, don't follow it. If you have made bread by hand, you should have realized that each loaf is different, each bag of flour is different, each package of yeast is different. Baking bread is an art not a science. So you can't expect to be able to measure carefully, follow the instruction, walk away and come back so many hours later to find perfect bread every time. Yikes, if I'd done that, it would actually have burned down the house one time when the yeast got so overly-exuberant the dough over flowed all the way to the heat coils and caught on fire.
So, why did I give it a 5 star rating. I found that what it does do is absolutely amazing and totally effortless compared to doing it all by hand. And I don't think it is reasonable to ask for more. It makes great bread reliably with only a modicum of help. It makes a lot of different kinds of bread. It has liberated me from buying bread made of "something from somewhere", which as more and more of the ingredients on the label of commercial breads are things I've never heard of, and ingredients are coming from parts of the world with decidedly iffy ideas about sanitation (like China, and GA), is becoming increasingly important.
I have found I can take all kinds of liberties with the recipes. What I do need to do is stay with the machine thru the first mixing/kneading cycle and adjust the flour so that it forms a dough ball that isn't sticking to the side. I also need to adjust the amount of yeast for the kind of flour I am using. And I do want to check on it as it is approaching the bake part of the cycle so that if it is rising to much I can punch it down, and punch it down, and if that doesn't tame it, take the dough out of the machine and bake it in bread pans.
For fifty odd dollars, this has been the best buy I have ever made.