The BM800 is counter top bread making machine with quite a lot of flexibility. It's extremely easy to use and the manual that comes with it is detailed, informative, and also contains most (if not all) the recipes you will need to satisfy your bread making needs.
I received my unit as a gift, so I cannot comment on the value for money, but I've seen these being sold anywhere from around the AU$250-$400 mark, locally and shipped to here in Australia.
Visually, apart from the black plastic opening handles and feet, and the window and screen, the entire unit exterior is shiny stainless steel, with chrome buttons. Everything looks really well made and durable, and would blend in very easily into most kitchens. The flat surfaces attract fingerprints though.
Once you open the (removable) lid, you can see the non-stick baking dish inside. This is where all the ingredients go and where the magic happens. Taking out the dish, you can see the drive crank and the heating element.
The lid has an integrated fruit/nut dispenser but I like to call it the auto dispenser, since you can put in a whole variety of things in there.
Usage:
For a fairly broad usage video, watch this:
http://youtu.be/oZzerNhgsCk
It really is as simple as adding the ingredients in the specified order and then hitting some buttons and walking away. 3 and a bit hours later, you will have a fresh loaf with the most amazing smell wafting through your whole house. For anyone who has been up partying all night and found themselves at a shopping mall looking for Gatorade and chips at 4am in the morning, the smell reminds me of the small bakeries they have along the walkways.
The unit comes with a timer so you can start the process whenever you like. What isn't mentioned in the video, but is very clear in the manual, is that if you plan to use the delay timer, use powdered milk on top of the dry ingredients so there is no curdling happening during the waiting time. Fresh milk can be used in with the wet ingredients if you are starting a loaf immediately.
While there is a light button on the control panel to let you see what's happening, I found that most of the time during kneading the window was fogged up and I could hardly see anything anyway. The light button also needs to be depressed the whole time you need the light on. I would have rather had a toggle switch or an auto off button for 2 minutes. The button on my unit doesn't activate very early in the press so you have to hold it and sometimes it flickers if you don't put enough pressure on it.
The first few time I made a loaf, I sat holding the light button the entire knead cycles. I'm sure this wore out the globe and I don't think it's an LED.
The auto dispenser is very handy, compared to other models without it. I've heard from others who have the dispenser-less model that the most annoying part is having to wait for the beeps to tell you when to add the flavouring ingredients. With the auto dispenser, you load it up at the start and it drops them in at the correct time. This lets you do a flavoured bread on a delay timer overnight and you don't have to worry about attending to it until it's finished baking.
My one gripe about the dispenser is that it is gravity activated both for the dispenser door, and ingredients. There is nothing mechanical to push the ingredients down with, so there is a chance that sticky raisins or fruit pieces can get stuck on the edges. It has happened to me once, so I might try dusting the tray with some ground cinnamon next time and see what happens.
One finicky thing that happens which is kind of glossed over in the video is that you should set the paddle alignment while it is in the machine, then take the dish out to add ingredients. If you take the dish out, add the paddle, then add the ingredients, when you go to put the dish back in it might not sit correctly. Then you have to either remember which orientation the paddle was in (I always put it at the same orientation so I know) and fiddle around with the crank, or guess. Doing this while holding the dish from it's handle in one hand is annoying and tiresome. If you move the paddle slightly past where you would normally orient it, then turn it back slightly while it is in the machine, then when you go to put it back in it should align and just slide right in.
Cleanup.
Cleaning the unit is easy as long as you always ensure ingredients are not able to fall out of the dish. A lot of dry ingredients will tend to fall onto the dish lip so brushing them off or back into the dish before placing in the machine will ensure the heating element and crank area remain spotless. The non-stick dish can be washed by hand normally with a soft sponge or just your hands. I like to get a toothbrush (used solely for washing up) to remove baked bread from the paddle, crank pin, and lower indents of the dish. With a bit of water, crust and baked on stuff come easily off.
Exterior cleanup just requires a wipe with a damp cloth.
The Good.
- Dead simple. Apart from the unloading processing when the dish is hot, a 3yo child could use this machine.
- Satisfying. There is something satisfying about making your own bread (even if the machine did all the elbow work). Putting any flavouring you want is like adding your own signature to something.
- Bread. Bread is amazing. Fresh out of the machine, I sometimes just have a slice of fruit loaf with nothing on it, it tastes that good.
- Easy cleanup. Cleaning takes about 3-5 minutes, or a bit more if something spills on the outside or into the heating/crank area.
- Flexibility. The settings on the machine are easy to understand and use for a beginner, but you can hit the Modify button to open up deeper custom options.
- Not just bread loaves. The machine also has setting for pizza dough, twist rolls, dense loaves, sweet loaves, and Jam (I have no idea about the jam function or how it works, or ever why you would want to use it. I want bread. Not jam. Good to know though, if ever I need jam and the store isn't open and I happen to have lots of berries lying around.)
- Build quality. The machine exterior, control panel, drive mechanism, and heating element look like they take a beating and last a really long time. Excellent IMHO.
The Bad.
- Whine. When my unit is powered on, there is a noticeable electric whine coming from the unit. I believe this has something to do with the power supply transformer connected to the drive unit but I notice it changes pitch whenever the light button is pressed. At 240V, 830W, it's drawing 3.5A. I'm pretty sure that's enough to get electrical burns with so don't try messing with it. Refer to customer care for any electrical faults/issues.
- Vibration. The unit tends to oscillate violently when the dough ball is off centre. This is normal and helps bring in ingredients that are stuck to the walls of the dish. It does however mean that the unit should be placed on a solid bench area, and not on a random plank of shelf wood sitting on top of the shipping box it came in like I have it currently.
- Auto dispenser stickiness. The dispenser should have had some sort of spring mechanism to push the ingredients down. I'm not 100% confident with sticky flavourings like raising when using the delay timer.
- Wear. I'm baking about a loaf every third day for myself and family members to enjoy, as well as the occasional guest or work colleagues. I've noticed the pins in the collapsible paddle become slightly looser than when new, but it still seems functional. Time will tell how long it holds up.
- Light switch. The light should have either been a toggle or a timed switch. I had to be there holding the switch while my sister held my niece above the viewing window. I guess I had fun watching the knead cycle too..
- Beep toggle is all or nothing. I would have liked to been able to turn off the beeps during the auto dispense action, but keep the beeps for start and end. Unfortunately, you either have to have all the beeps off or on.
- Heat. The outside of the unit can get quite hot. I wouldn't have thought so given the design and vents but it's something to look out for. There is also no easy way to get the dish out after baking without tea towel/oven mitts and using your hands. I would have like to have had a hook (like those used to remove billy cans from campfires) to remove the dish as the tea towel method I use is cumbersome. If you look at the video, the dish is already cool when she takes it out of the machine, otherwise she would have burnt her left pointer finger and probably her other hand's fingers just after the cut in the video.
Overall.
I was expecting the BM800 to be good, but I wasn't expecting it to be this good, or that I would be using it so often. I have only used the loaf function so far, but I intend to make some pizza dough and twist rolls next. I might update this post too once I do those.
For anyone who likes to eat bread, make bread, watch bread being made, watch bread rising, watch bread baking, or just wants their house to smell like a bakery, getting a breadmaker is a must. I would wholeheartedly recommend this product to anyone. It ticks all the right boxes and aside from a few small niggles which aren't really problems, it's basically perfect.
Score:
9.8/10.
