Breadman T4000 Ultimate Dream Machine, 2.5 LB.

Litmus test: I nailed a great loaf on my first attempt.

This machine is in a different league from my old Sunbeam. It comes with a bunch of preset cycles, but you can set the duration of individual stages (e.g. "3rd Rise").

The manual is well written. Not only is it full of useful information, but it is also a pleasant read; manuals nowadays are often very poorly translated into English, and you have to spend a long time trying to figure out what they're trying to say. This one is great in comparison.

So far I've had no problems with belts, or anything else. It really works well. That said, a couple of suggestions:

1) Stick around for the first few minutes of kneading. You may have to push some dry ingredients off the corner of the pan with the handle of a wooden spoon. The pan is longer than in most breadmakers, and dough may stick furthest from the paddle. Once the machine develops the ball, though, the problem goes away...Read more

I recently purchased the Ultimate Dream Machine and have been using it a few times a week since that time. It is very easy to use and makes a wonderful loaf of bread. I've made several different varieties and all have tasted great. Both the texture and flavor are far superior to anything you pick up in the bread aisle of your local grocery store.

The bread pan is not exactly what I would consider heavy weight so I wouldn't bang it around in the sink when you are cleaning it. However, the mixing blade itself is very sturdy and easy to remove from the pan after baking. The interior of the machine has needed very little cleaning. Just a damp paper towel to wipe out any flour that has puffed out of the pan during mixing.

As a single person, I have primarily been using the 1.5 lb loaf size. I usually still have some left overs at the end of a week and give those to the birds. I would think that the 2.5 lb loaf would be a good size for a family...Read more

Amazon has it as the T4000 i guess they just forgot to put the R in there. They are selling it for $99.00 while everybody else is selling it for $217.00-$250.00. This is really a ultimate bread machine. You can put your own recipes in the memory or change the kneading,resting, or baking cycles to really fine tune your bread. The touch pad is really user friendly. All you have to do is touch the pad and pull up a recipe, no looking it up in the book. It's all there on the LCD screen. I bought this for making sourdough bread from my own sourdough cultures. There is several sourdough recipes in the book but they use yeast in them so that's not true sourdough bread. I have my own cultures some i started myself, and others i bought from sourdoughs international great website. I also picked up Ed Woods book " Classic Sourdoughs" available here or at his website that has a ton of info and has many hand and sourdough machine recipes and techniques in it. I'm really loving the flexability of...Read more