Breadman TR444 2-Pound Rapid-Bake Horizontal Breadman
From Breadman
Enjoy fresh baked bread in just an hour with this Breadman bread machine's 59-minute super rapid start-to-finish feature--it also lets you choose from as many as 22 bread settings and bake a different loaf each time. The LED display keeps you informed to its progress, and this machine can be set to bake up to 13 hours in advance, so when you arrive home from work, you'll walk in to the smell of freshly baking bread. Cleaning the traditionally shaped horizontal pan is easy with the nonstick loaf pan.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #463225 in Kitchen & Housewares
- Brand: Breadman
- Model: TR444
- Dimensions: 15.00" h x 9.50" w x 11.00" l, 18.75 pounds
Versatile and easy to operate, this breadmaker creates nearly any imaginable type of bread and mixes and kneads pizza and other doughs for baking goodies in the oven. Buttons and an LED display make 22 combinations available: choices include a 1-, 1-1/2-, or 2-pound loaf; regular or rapid-rise (white bread only, in 59 minutes) settings; light, medium, or dark crust; and thin, crisp French-style or regular crust.
Making bread in the Breadman is no more complicated than placing basic ingredients (or bread mixes) into the bread pan and letting the machine mix, knead, rise, punch down, rise again, and bake horizontal ("squared vertical") loaves. Furthermore, ingredients can be placed in the machine up to 13 hours from the time a fresh, warm loaf is wanted; simply program the machine to begin work so the loaf emerges at the desired time. Bread for supper can be started in the morning or breakfast cinnamon rolls the day before. An instruction booklet accompanies the machine, along with recipes. The bread pan and kneading paddle are nonstick and can be cleaned in warm, soapy water. The machine carries a one-year warranty against defects. --Fred Brack
There are better choices
We're pretty heavy bread-maker users and when our old machine died after 7 years of hard use we picked up this model. We've been very disappointed: It's inconvenient to add ingredients (they need to be added in a specific order), it's very noisy, and the bread has the consistency of cake. I'd look elsewhere. Our machine is going into our sell-at-next-garage-sale box.
TERRIBLE!!
I used this bread machine 4 times successfully, on the 5th time it malfunctioned, fried the electronics and it no longer even turns on! I had to pry the lid open with a screwdriver because the plastic melted. It could have started a fire if I had not been home! The customer service dept are worthless - they will only repair it (ha ha). Best bet to return it from where you bought it.
Extremely noisy, poor design
I thought this was the machine I wanted, because it had a die-cast pan like the beloved Oster machine it was replacing. (Oster, unfortunately, has abandoned quality in the interest of cutting prices and satisfying the irrational consumer notion that a loaf of bread must be rectangular, not square.)
I was wrong. The heavy die-cast pan does make a better crust than conventional stamped pans, but this machine over-kneaded the dough (40 minutes altogether), resulting in a dense texture inside.
But the worst thing about this machine was the noise. The machine was driven by a toothed belt with matching slotted pulleys. Nothing wrong with that, except that Breadman engineers apparently thought this design eliminated the need for belt tension. The belt was loose, and it often slipped out of the notches during the kneading cycle. The result was a loud banging noise that resounded throughout the house. I could never use this machine on the delay setting, because the banging would wake me up during the night.
Customer Service just told me the noise was normal, wouldn't damage the machine, and I could try adding more water to the dough.
After trying 3 loaves of bread, I exchanged the machine for the Breadman TR2200C Ultimate, which is far superior and well worth the extra 30 bucks. I will miss the crisp crust of the die-cast pan, but otherwise the Ultimate is a better machine.
