Our 30-year old Zojirushi bread maker finally broke. This West Bend had good reviews and was a good price. So far, we have made 4 of the recipes in the owner's manual. All of those loaves were excellent. This machine has way more settings than our old one. Take time to read the manual. You can't spray the pan with Pam, use a rough sponge, or put the pan in the dishwasher. It also calls for the water to be 80 degrees since there is no preheat feature. (That will be harder when using fresh milk but not a major problem once we figure out microwave times.) It also said to put 1/4 of any butter used in each corner of the pan which is different than just dropping a chunk in. When the loaf comes out of the pan, the bottom is tearing where the kneading paddles have been baked in. There is a tool to remove the paddles but it is still tearing. However, those chunks are very tasty. lol. Remember to check the loaf size, 2, 2-1/2 or 3 pound as it will default to the previous setting. We have baked everything on Medium crust and they look great. The unit is deeper than our old one so we had to rearrange the cupboard for it to fit sideways, again not a major problem. Our old recipes max out around 3 cups of bread flour. This one can take almost double that but the loaves are way bigger. We will have to adjust our favorite recipes to make larger loaves. (The smaller loaves don't fill the entire pan and come out a little lopsided. The larger loaves are very symmetrical and look like they came from a bakery.) We had to get a larger airtight container to keep these big loaves in, again not a major problem. The see-thru lid is great. So is the count down timer. Cleaning the inside hole of the paddles was challenging until we got a bottle brush. Now any baked on dough comes completely out of the hole where the paddles attach. The West Bend did not get 5 stars in all categories but that's probably due to our learning curve. We can recommend this unit and would buy it again. Enjoy.

The first two bakes turned out great the last four have had to be frown out, water temp spot on, followed mixing steps outlined in the book and the yeast not expired !

I like that it is simple and easy to use. I especially like having the horizontal loaves. Much easier to slice.

First off I love how easy it is to make bread with this bread maker. It mixes evenly it cleans up easily. You need a small bristle brush (you can find here on Amazon) to get inside the paddles to clean or you will get discoloring on your bread otherwise it is easy to clean. I made the basic bread recipe and we like the 2 lb bread. It browns perfectly and the crust is crunch and the inside is soft. The bread is good for sandwiches and toasts nicely. I am very happy with this purchase. I do recommend you pause your bread on the 3rd rise and pull out the dough and remove the paddles and shape your dough. Then place back in the machine and restart the 3rd rise. You will have a prettier loaf with no big paddle indents. Well worth the money if you are health conscious and want to know your ingredients.

I once owned a West Bend two blade bread maker and just loved it. I used it for many years before the door latch broke, which was my fault. I had set it aside to repair it and it was mistakenly thrown away.

When I made the decision to purchase a new bread maker, West Bend was the only choice for me. I don't like the one blade machines. This makes a perfect long bread loaf.