Zojirushi BBCC-X20 Bread Machine

Well, I seem to be reviewing everything else in the kitchen cupboards on this trip (flights to Hong Kong are great for this sort of stuff), so I might as well chime in on the bread maker scene as well.

I got the Zo (as we call it) as a holiday gift about a year ago from my resolutely non-cooking wife. She hates cooking -- fortunately, I *like* to cook, so it was a nice gift, as I really like fresh bread, but the time involved to prepare same was out of my budget for that period, and I'd been complaining a bit about it. If you've read my review of the Kitchenaid 5 qt stand mixers, you know that the old standby would have worked forever, but it's nice to have some automation for some tasks that can be offloaded and don't require constant human attention. Waiting for bread dough to rise and then taking the time to beat the living daylights out of it periodically is highly theraputic, but time consuming.

The Zo V20 is a oblong white unit, with a horizontal non-stick baking pan on the left side of the unit. The pan contains two mixing paddles driven by a fairly serious motor. The control panel on the right is good-sized, the buttons are well spaced and clearly labeled, and the LCD cycle indicator has predefined cycles for white, wheat, sandwich, pastry, custom dough, and jam (the "sandwich" setting has an extra rise/punch down cycle that makes the air bubbles in the bread smaller, and thus a bit easier to use for sandwiches -- no big holes in the slices). I can't say I've ever used the jam setting -- it seems like a odd afterthought, and besides, the machine is usually busy making bread, not things to spread on it...8-) There is a timer function that can start the bread maker at a predefined interval, and the "custom dough" setting allows you to build your own cycles to match a particular recipe. Custom cycles are saved across power interruptions, but there can be only one custom cycle at a time. The power cord is a goodly 6 feet long, so you have some room to move it around, and the cover opens neatly underneath a standard wall cabinet height, so you can tuck it into some otherwise unused space w/o grieving over the loss of the counter space. As others have mentioned, there is also a setting that prompts you to add "mix-ins" after the first mix cycle.

The best things about this machine are the simplicity of operation and the excellent recipe book that comes with it. I mentioned the non-cooking wife above -- she will actually _use_ this machine. It is literally "pour the stuff into the non-stick pan, put in machine, push start, come back in 3 hours and scarf down bread". Nothing more complicated than that. The recipe book is chock-full of good bread stuff, too -- the Italian herb bread and the basic bread recipe are 100% winners every time.

Some things that are less attractive are:

1) removing the paddles for cleaning usually requires soaking in water for a few minutes following a bread cycle. This requires waiting for the pan to cool enough to put into water, which can take 5-10 minutes or more.

2) the machine makes a distinctive noise when operating that can be quite disturbing, especially during the punch-down cycles. It will convince you it's about to cough it's last, but it isn't really -- apparently it's supposed to make that noise, and you eventually get used to it.

3) the wheat bread cycles tend to get bogged down if you use recipes that include a lot of wheat gluten. This happens usually when you're using a recipe that wasn't designed for bread machines, but you'll get the 15 lb Hockey Puck from Heck if you don't watch the machine through at least the first mix cycle with heavier flours. Russian rye would probably be beyond it's capability to do completely automagically.

4) a strictly minor annoyance, but the basic bread recipe is printed on the right side of the unit. This is the side that goes against the refrigerator, and it's a hassle to turn it around or look up the book to find the basic recipe. It'd be nice if it were on both ends, or on the front. (I know, whine, whine.)

5) the function of the timer is a bit counter-intuitive. It's set as delay until normal cycle start, eg if you want bread in the morning and it's night, you set it to start at 6 hours away and allow for the 3 hour bake time to have bread for breakfast at 9. It would be a lot easier if there was just a standard clock and you set the time you wanted it to start up, especially in these days of one-chip clocks.

Overall, it's been a lovely device, though. I really no longer think about making bread to go with dinner, loading the machine just gets included in the end of breakfast and it's there when I get home. It's a great start to the wonders of fresh baked goods, and after you have one for a while, you'll really start to hate store-bought bread.