Toastmaster 1148X Fast Bake 2-Pound Horizontal Bread Machine

I was HIGHLY disappointed in this machine. I got this machine last October, had it for 2 months and it died after making horrible clunking noises for a week. I took it to the certified repair center who had it for a month and said they fixed it, but when I took it home to make pizza dough it died the same day. I was FURIOUS and shipped it back to the company. I will say I got very prompt service from them and had a new one (they couldn't fix mine) on my doorstep in 10 days from when I had sent it. I was happy until the new one started doing the SAME THING after 4 months of use. It just died 2 days ago. Needless to say I am looking for a different brand. To be fair I will say that I use my breadmaker 5-7x/week. However the Welbuilt machines I had previously took that kind of workload for 6 years without a problem. So Don't buy this machine unless you are only using it on a rare occassion!

My husband and I chose this breadmaker as a 10 yr. anniversary gift from his employer. I have used it only 2 days and I have two main complaints about it. One, I don't like that this is a vertical machine, I like the top of the bread to be like the bread found in grocery stores. Two, on the basic medium cycle, the bread got way too dark and I had to turn off the machine even though it had 32 minutes left to bake the bread. My son said the bread was burning. Who knows what the bread would have looked like if I had left it in the machine until the end of the cycle!

The recipe book is easy to understand and has a lot of information; I suggest that you read it a few times all the way through before you start to make bread. I have not used any of the cycles except Basic Medium and French. My husband and I feel that we will only use the 1 lb. and 1.5 lb. setting, because when I made the French Bread on the 2 lb. setting, the bread was not dense like normal french bread--it had a lot...Read more

You know, it's funny because I wanted this thing so badly but I couldn't "justify" paying $1-200 to make bread at home. Years went by that I just kept wanting it.

What's so funny is that if you look at my other reviews, I don't even blink when it comes to spending $2-300 on a device that replaces my $10 dayplanner, or $200 on an MP3 player to replace my walkman!

I realized that I had this "kitchen" mental block going so I caved in and bought the Toastmaster. I haven't regretted it since. There are a LOT of breadmachine cookbooks out there - but here's what i've done to make owning one of these Very economical, easy, and fun.

1. I MASTERED the plain white bread recipe. Every little spoonful of ingredients makes a world of difference. Your altitude, humidity level - everything can influence your recipe. So rather than switching recipes all the time (too many changed variables - that's the engineer in me speaking) I keep the same...Read more