Hi!
We had a Hitachi machine -- I think a 102 -- and found that after 3
months it would no longer raise the bread dough. We wrote in to this
excellent newsgroup, and soon found out that many owners of Hitachis of
various ages, were having the same problem; so we took our machine back
to Costco to exchange it. When we got there, we found that Costco had
had a large number of returns on these machines. All were for the rising
problem.
We just got a refund, and since then have not had a machine :-(. We're
hoping to get our hands on a Zoji, since you can program them the way you
want to, and we're bread bakers from years back and would prefer a bit
more control. Unfortunately, the Zoji machines are not sold in Canada;
and that's a pity since Fleishmanns tells us that Canadians are very much
into home baking bread, and this would be an excellent market for a
programmable machine.
Anyway, it seems likely that your machine is doing the notorious Hitachi
cool-down. They must know about this problem by now, so you might get
good results by contacting them.
Good luck and good bread to you!
Janet