Made a perfect loaf in my old bread maker. Definitely recommend.

worth the money

Excellent product

The mix itself is excellent. I used it in a bread machine, so keep this in mind. The flavor is excellent compared to the zero-fiber, over-yeasted rip-off paste you get at the supermarket.

But...there are three things you should know:

1) Do not follow the recipe with the butter. Three pounds of butter in a 1.5-pound loaf makes bread-flavored butter-soup. I suggest a half-stick of butter instead. (Unsalted, since the mix has tons of sodium in it.) Maybe only a little in the mix--just split the loaf when it's done and put the melted butter into the slit. I don't know--get creative.

2) The included yeast was dead. If you're doing the bread machine thing like I did, just pop over to the grocery store and buy some Fleischmann's bread machine yeast. A lot of the bad reviews for this product are obviously due to too much butter in a loaf that didn't rise because of dead yeast. As I test, I remixed my deflated test loaf with Fleishmann's yeast, re-cooked it and it rose respectability. Case closed.

3) Don't beat yourself up with the water temp if you're using a bread machine. Fresh yeast (like from a grocery store, where it moves off the shelf), will be fine at any temp from like 80 to 120 degrees. Anyway, if you're dumping the water at the bottom of bread machine's pan, it will be cooled to room temp because the pan is *metal*, and radiates the heat away immediately. The bread machine supplies the correct temp during the kneading and rise cycles. The initial water temp has very little to do with the actual temp of the mix when it's time to rise. Think about it.

Also: Be careful how much water you put into the bread machine's pan. If you're putting a lot of butter in the mix, the water content of the butter counts toward the '1 cup' of water the instructions reference. Bread dough should be sticky and firm, and if rolled up in a ball it should stay in form--mostly. If it's too runny, it won't hold its shape during the rise phase, and the CO2 that yeast is producing will escape, and leave behind a deflated loaf of bread. Really just common sense.

My husband and I love, love, LOVE this bread. However, the shipping has really gone UP. We use to buy it occasionally when the shipping was $7.95 but now I refuse to buy a product where the shipping costs more than the product. We will just have to hunt up a recipe and make it ourselves. Sorry, Prepared Pantry, you've lost our business......