Oster Expressbake Breadmaker, 2-lb. Loaf Capacity, 2 lb, White/Ivory

Bought: March 3, 2013 @ 59.99 Date of this Review: November 12, 2015 Status of this breadmaker: Showing its age but still chugging! I have been relocated by my company (together with my family) here in the US from Singapore. We moved to New Jersey around Nov, 2012 and we have been buying loaves of bread from our nearby supermarket daily @ $2.50 a pop 5 times a week. Over the couple of months we noticed that we are feeling a bit "down" thinking it was just us adjusting to the weather but we were also gaining weight every month. So, trying to be "healthy" we started reading the labels of each food we buy and noticed a LOOOOT of ingredients that looked like from a science fiction/medical drama series (see attached photo). So we thought of making our own bread from scratch but didn't want to spend a lot of time kneading and rising the dough everyday. Enter this bread machine and some research enabled us to save money and in turn saved our health. For the money saving part, we sourced the following ingredients: Walmart: Great Value Flour 25-Pound - $8 (37 servings) Great Value Powdered Milk 4-lbs - $16 (64 servings) Zulka Morena Pure Cane Sugar, 8 lbs - $5 (128 servings) Great Value: Vegetable Oil, 1 Gal - $5 (64 servings) Augason Farms Iodized Salt, 104 oz - $5 (623 servings) Amazon: Bob's Red Mill Gluten Flour Pack of 4 of 22-ounce each - $23 (83 servings) The Ready Store: SAF Premium Yeast 16oz - $7 (48 servings) Note: Per 1 serving denotes 1 loaf of 1.5 lb bread. So per serving of all combined ingredients above costs me $1.012! (Savings: $1.488). So in less than 2 months, I already made back the cost of the bread machine. So after that and 28 months later today - this breadmaker is still baking strong even after roughly 500 loaves of bread (20+/- loaves a month) with a total saving of around $700+. That said, we felt better after a couple of months and lost some weight. Even our dog likes our freshly baked bread - note that she NEVER EVER touched the ones we bought from the store. Not to mention the great sensation of smelling the loaves you bake - it's freshness! And a dab of butter on a freshly cut loaf lifts up your morale even more! The other best thing about making your bread at home - you can go beyond that simple loaf of bread! Add nuts, add eggs, add spices. Turn it into pumpernickel. Turn it into hoagies. Into fresh baguette. Into basically...anything! I bought the "The Artisan Bread Machine" here in Amazon and delved into more creations. We can now make anything the fancy bakeries out there can make WITHOUT the unspeakable ingredients. Pros: * Durable * Can make a variety of loaves with your desired setting * It takes only around 5 minutes to dump in the ingredients then it mixes and bakes * Never failed to make the perfect loaf (only if you put in the correct ingredients in the correct order) Cons: * As it ages (more than 2 years old now), the non-stick coating is fading but that's to be expected * It doesn't do laundry Bottomline: If this breaks - I'm buying it again and hopefully the same quality as before. Worth the money and ROI pays off quickly. Better health knowing you know what goes in your bread > Priceless! ---------------------------------------- Update: 2/1/2017 After almost 4 years - we have to let go of this beloved bread machine of ours. Not because it stopped working, but because we once again have to move to a country of different voltage and would deem impractical to bring this along. So almost after 4 years - it is still working and will hopefully find a new home (donated to the VVA). Definitely, if I ever found the same brand, we're buying this again. This is a final revision of this review - This bread machine has given us wonderful bread (and some bad ones - our fault) and wonderful memories. And thank you for the helpful comments that helped us and others. Hope this would help more people in the future.

Like many reviewers here, I've made my own bread in the past, but wanted a bread machine for the "set it and forget it" model of bread-making. This one looked easy to use, flexible in its capabilities, and affordable. It just came in the mail today (ahead of the book of recipes I also ordered), and I couldn't wait to make something with it! I took it out, set it up (cleaning two pieces, super easy), and read over the sections of the book that seemed relevant. It's clear it was written by someone who knows the English language and isn't a hack-translation. For a first shot, I went with the first recipe that shows up in the manual that many people poo-poo for not being good. But uh oh! I was out of butter and had no milk powder! After some googling, I found you can generally replace the water in the recipe with milk. And, as with other bread recipes, other oils can replace the butter (vegetable, olive, etc). PHEW! I precisely measured 1 cup milk + 3/8 cup water (who the heck comes up with 3/8 anyway?) and 2 tbs of olive oil to replace the butter. In it went. I went down the list of the other ingredients and added them in order, skipping the milk powder. The dry ingredients completely covered the wet ones at the bottom. I made a well in the flour and put the yeast in there so it didn't come into contact with the salt, as some people have warned. Medium crust and hit GO!!! I wanted to see how the machine worked following the rest of the manual exactly. No scraping the sides. No lifting the lid. Where I live, the humidity and elevation do not muck up other recipes, so I figured it should all go as planned. The result? After the first 5 minutes of mixing, there was still a bit of flour and such at the corners of the bowl. After the 15 minute mark, the dough had formed a perfect ball, not a spec of flour or anything else on the sides. I was amazed! I don't know if other recipes will work out as well, but following directions and measuring everything very carefully, as the manual states many times, it seems to work well. Another reviewer mentioned a weird beeping that occurred during the cycle (and woke him up in the night when he had set the cycle to go). The book doesn't mention it explicitly in "Bread Machine Stages" list, but that's the extra ingredients step that most cycles have. It scared me at first, but once I knew what it was everything was okay. The bread just came out and it looks and tastes awwweeeesooooome! My husband and I give it 5 stars. It's big and fluffy and yummy. No pockets of non-mixed ingredients on the inside, no flour or other stuff on the outside. It's firm enough that I can cut it into thin sandwich slices without totally smooshing it, but soft and airy on the inside. The crust is crunchy, but not hard. The mixing spatula was left in the bowl when I took the bread out, and it didn't make much of a hole in any one piece of bread. So... the first recipe works fine if you do it right, and bread making is all about figuring out what works for your area anyway. All I have left to clean is a few crumbs in the bowl and on the mixing spatula. Much easier than regular bread and took about as long to make!

good stuff

The machine is easy to use and offers a variety of bread types and other dough products. However, I would suggest searching out other recipes online. We have only tried whole wheat recipes so far, but the results varied quite a bit according to the recipe we used. As the comments suggest, you can experiment and add or subtract small amounts of ingredients in a particular recipe to get better results, but for the beginner, trying various recipes can be an easier entry into using the bread machine to its maximum. After a few attempts with mixed results, the recipe that I tried today (found online) produced a lighter, tastier whole wheat bread as compared to the ones in the user manual. Generally pleased with the simplicity of use and variety of bread products available on this machine. Also, clean-up is quick and easy.

Excelente equipo. Es importante seguir las instrucciones correctamente. También tienen que considerar a que altura sobre el nivel del mar está operando la panera, ya que de eso depende que quede bien el producto final. Las primeras piezas de pan, no quedaron bien, por lo que tuve que cambiar un poco las recetas ya que se tenia que aumentar o disminuir algún ingrediente. Pero después, todo fue muy fácil, y el resultado es asombroso. Excelentes Hogazas de Pan. Lo recomiendo ampliamente. Pero recuerden, hay que hacer pruebas al principio, pero una vez que quede un hogaza, apuntar bien la receta y volverla a hacer igual Sugiero comprar un libro de recetas, ya que en estos libros, viene bien explicado la diferencia de cocinar en ciudades que están al nivel del mar y las que están a mas de 1500 metros de altura sobre el nivel del mar (Como Mexico,D.F., Puebla, Toluca, etc). Si consideran este factor, el producto final sale perfecto

Je n'ai que de bons commentaires pour ma nouvelle machine à pain. J'ai fait plusieurs recettes et le pain est toujours parfait. La texture de la mie et de la croute sont toujours parfait. La mie est moelleuse et la croute croustillante sans être dure. L'appareil est très stable sur le comptoir et ne bouge pas. Le bac interne est facile à manipuler, facile à installer et à retirer quand le pain est prêt. Très bon achat, je suis très satisfaite.

Con levadura instantánea en buen estado, levanta bien la masa, excepto en el modo xpress de 1 hora total, ahí siento que no levanta tanto como en los otros modos, pero eso es de esperarse y de cualquier forma quedan muy decentes. Buena calidad, no hace mucho ruido ni se tambalea al batir. OJO: Si tienes niños, jugando aprietan el botón de inicio o apagado, se echó a perder el pan, xq no puedes reiniciar donde ibas, inicia de nuevo a batir y demás. Hemos probado pan de plátano, clásico, italiano, etc. todos han salido bien sin problemas. Pagué cerca de 100 USD ($1,920MXN) y compraría de nuevo, mis hijos piden pan diario desde que la tenemos. He escuchado quejas por la altura sobre el nivel del mar, pero en Guadalajara, funcionó sin problemas.