Someone mentionned putting together a breadmaker FAQ:
We were given an Oster last summer and make 2-3 loaves a week of 100% whole
wheat bread (with some experiments with rye, buckwheat, and cheese breads.)
It's been a great machine! It's got a timer, dough cycle, raisin beep, all
the features. It makes big, square loaves that are crust on 5 sides and
nicely rounded on top. It seems to have some "intelligence" as it makes
almost perfect loaves even when we are careless with the ingredients (ok,
except for the time we forgot to put ANY salt in...)
A few weeks ago, it started making this horrible squealing noise when
mixing the flour. Not every time, but when it happened it was really
awful. I called Sunbeam/Oster tech support. It took several phone calls to
get through, but when I did, the rep said "Hmm, we've heard of a few that
did that" and sent us a new breadmaker! We also got a shipping label to
send the old one back UPS. I am very impressed that they were willing to
send us the new one before getting the old one back. That's customer
service!
Our new machine just made its first loaf of bread and it was equally,
uniformly good. We're very happy with this machine. I get the impression
that some of the smaller, cheaper machines are'nt really strong enough to
handle 100% whole wheat bread.
Betsy
(happy customer, no other relation)
PS We used two of the prepackaged mixes to test the machine when we first
got it, and we ended up taking them to the park to feed to the birds. We'd
been eating really good whole wheat bread that we get from the supermarkets
and it was a real shock eating that artificial white stuff. I don't know
why anyone with a bread machine would use a mix full of chemicals with it!
PPS we also bought a bread tray with deep grooves to catch the bread crumbs
and it made a huge difference in our kitchen. I reccomend one to anyone
with a breadmaker or who wants to buy a present for a bread-making friend!)