Oster 5838 ExpressBake Breadmaker, White
by Oster
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List Price: Our Price: $83.73 You Save: $26.22 (24%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $78.98 (click here) Category: Kitchen See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Oster 5838 ExpressBake Breadmaker, White
Customer Review: Great Machine, just bake it yourself
Summary: 5 Stars
This machine works great for mixing the dough, but like every other bread machine out there I would recommend baking the bread yourself in an oven. If you use the machine, the loaf just isn't that attractive, and it is super crusty.
If you mix using the directions (bread flour and bread machine yeast are a must to make sure the bread rises correctly), just remove the dough before the bake cycle (1 hour left), re-shape, let rise for 30 minutes, put it in the oven and you'll have a great loaf.
This bread machine will take the hassle out of mixing, kneading, and waiting for it to rise. We've made about 20 loaves in this, and the only time the bread wasn't bakery-perfect was when we didn't use bread machine yeast.
Customer Review: Beats the old way.
Summary: 5 Stars
I just bought this machine today in self defense. I grew up with homemade bread but had never actually made any until today. It was drudgery, I destroyed the kitchen, there was no way to get the last couple of ounces of flour kneaded in. I started at 11:00 and got bread at 5:30. And it was good bread. I discovered I needed some things so during one of the multiple "rises" I hit the hardware store. Priced the breadmaking tools, spotted the breadmaker on sale, grabbed and ran. Got home just in time to put the handmade loaves in the oven. While it was warming up, I threw the ingredients for a 2 lb expressbake loaf in the machine and lit 'er up. Both finished about the same time. Same ingredients, same taste. One took most of the day, generated a huge mess and my hands and arms are unhappy from the work. The other was dump the stuff in and push the button. Nolo contendre. Dashed here to read the reviews and tell the story. No effort, no skill needed, great bread and I cleaned it with a paper towel. No regrets Customer Review: Best Buy
Summary: 4 Stars
I have owned one of these (or its predecessor) for many years. After 7 years and hundreds of loaves, the paddle can no longer remain fixed to the pan, and I figured it's time to replace it.
Having read the reviews, may I make one suggestion to make perfect bread every time. Weighing the flour may be one solution but this may be easier. After the initial 10 minutes, take a rubber spatula, and scrape any dry flour from the corners into the dough. You can tell by the consistency of the dough if it is too dry or too wet. If too dry, ad a teaspoon of water at a time. If too wet, ad a finely ground corn flour - a teaspoon at a time.
If you start with very warm water, the cool metal baking pan will cool the water to the correct temperature. Failure to rise can be due to too little sugar, too much salt, or bad yeast. Always ad the yeast last and on top of all the other ingredients.
Customer Review: A good breadmaker if not for mechanical problems
Summary: 3 Stars
I got this machine from a friend who got tired of fixing one single type of bread she figured out. I tried about five to ten recipes from the enclosed book, and they all came out at least decent. I've been using the regular yeast, never tried the fast varieties. While the white bread recipes have produced consistently good results, the whole wheat/rye recipes would only rise about halfway producing small dense loafs.
After a few months of baking two or so loafs a week, the rotating mechanism (blade connected to the motor through the hole in baking pan) started leaking. I have devised a temporary fix (took a nail and bend it around the rotating part, and lifted the whole thing a little bit using a washer) -- it worked for some while, but lead to even greater wearing down of the mechanism leading to even greater leaks. Now, by the time I put yeast in that hole I make in the pile of dry ingredients, pretty much all of the liquid is gone! So I am either playing a guessing game trying to figure out how much liquid was lost, or trying to add liquid to the dry mixture -- either is producing weird results. So actually the only reason I came across this page was that I was looking for the parts. Appears that only the blades are easily available; pans and rotors are not. Too bad; the parts are only $10 at most that I am quite willing to spend, but I will probably have to hand it down to somebody else, or just throw it away if I don't find the proper replacement.
Customer Review: Get this bread machine
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the most pleasant cooking surprise of my life. After reading reviews for the last six months, visiting kitchen stores, talking to friends who bake, I narrowed my decision to two items. I was either going to get a Cuisinart stand mixer to knead the dough & then bake the bread in the oven, OR I was going to get a Zojirushi BBCCX20 Home Bakery Supreme Bread Machine. I ended up doing neither because I bought this Oster on a whim for $25.00 from someone who couldn't take it with her when she was moving. I thought I'd try it out for a while to see if I really liked bread machines before investing in a "better" one. My main concern about bread machines was the fact that I like a crusty, chewy crust...the kind you get with homemade artisan bread. Could that be accomplshed with a bread machine?
I took the bread machine home and followed the unbelievably simple instructions for the french bread recipe, choosing 'medium' for the crust color. The buttons on the bread machine were foolproof. You do three things after throwing the ingredients (in the correct order) into the pan:
1. select the type of bread you are making
2. choose the crust color
3. press start
That's IT! The bread came out PERFECTLY. The crust was everything I hoped for - chewy & crusty. The house smelled fabulous with the nice freshly baked bread aroma, the pan was easily wiped clean, and perhaps best of all, it made a horizontal loaf in a nice-looking bread machine that doesn't take up a lot of counter space. Operating the machine was so clear that I didn't have to read the directions (though I DID read them after-the-fact just for fun this morning). The only thing I would do differently would be to try to use a bit less salt (for my health) in the recipe. And next time I'm going to experiment & make some kalamata olive bread. The machine beeps at a certain point in the process to tell you now's the time to add herbs, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, etc.. There is also a timer so you can time the bread to be ready when you come home from work. Having been in a house fire, I'm VERY wary of having anything cooking when I am not there. I'm sure it's safe & everyone uses that feature, but...
So, don't feel like you have to spend a lot on a "better" bread machine. This one works beautifully, is simple to use AND you'll have money left over to buy that other kitchen gadget you've always wanted.