I love bread (especially focaccia), but am very picky about it. One of my favorite bakeries is 13 miles away from my home. I used to drive there twice a week, and then realized I was paying double for my bread--bread for me and gas for my car.

Being a cooking enthusiast (my kitchen becomes my refuge from the pressures of school and a good way to procrastinate), I decided to make my own bread. Not wanting to compromise on the taste and time spent in making homemade bread, I got myself a Salton Breadman TR888 bread machine. It has good reviews on Amazon, a multitude of functions and was the right price (I paid $69.99).

This machine is simply amazing!

Not having made bread before, my first loaf turned out to be quite delicious. No experience or skills are required in operating it. Simply put in all the ingredients as suggested, push the button, and after three to four hours, a homemade, fresh and fluffy loaf of bread is made. It can make up to 2-pound loaves at one sitting. There are 19 programs, three shade selections and even a delay timer. With the 19 programs, you can make several kinds of bread (including a quick setting that makes bread in around one hour), dough, butter and dessert. The delay timer can be set up to 13 hours- put all the ingredients in the pan at night, and wake up to the wonderful aroma of fresh homemade bread in the morning!

So far, I have made several loaves of bread, dinner rolls, and even pizza dough. All the results were impressive, and cleaning is not much of a problem. There are a few minor issues that I would like to mention:

1. It is not a noisy machine, but it does make a noticeable sound. When using delay timer, make sure to put this thing away from your bed.
2. Although the machine does come with a recipe book, you can try recipes from other sources. I personally recommend allrecipes.com. You can find tons of selections with ratings from reviewers (other cooking enthusiasts). To save your time searching in the large database, you can buy their Tried & True Cookbooks. These are the collections of popular and highly rated recipes contributed from others on the site.

The other product I considered was the Sunbeam 5891. It also has nice reviews, similar functions and is even cheaper (The cheapest one that I found on Become.com is around $36). I chose Breadman over Sunbeam because the design was a lot more attractive. Nothing wrong with a little superficiality, as long as it contains all the functionality I desire.

Patricia