Zojirushi BB-PDC20BA Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker, 2 lb. loaf of bread

I bought this bread maker three months ago, and I haven't purchased a single loaf of store-bought bread since. My family asks for fresh bread everyday, and this machine makes it effortless. Knowing there are only 6 ingredients in the bread and one of them is water makes me feel good about them eating it. It takes me under 5 minutes to throw the ingredients in, and then the machine does all of the work for the next 3 and 1/2 hours. I love it so much that I even brought it along on vacation! Everyone laughed at me when they saw me carrying it, but they weren't laughing long. The never got cold, I made it every single day and some people even found their way to the kitchen just from the smell. For my recipe, I use honey instead of sugar. It is supposed to keep the bread moist longer, and it absolutely works. When I was shopping for a bread maker, I noticed this model had some of the best reviews online. It is a little bit more expensive, but it delivers a perfect loaf of bread every time. It is worth every penny, and I would highly recommend buying one!

I have only owned this bread machine for a few days so can’t say anything about durability and reliability. But in terms of what it can do, I’m amazed. My very first loaf of basic white bread was perfect! I have tried making bread by hand quite a few times over the years and have always ended up frustrated and disappointed. I just never got the “feel” that you need to be a good bread baker. But this little “bread robot” solves the problem. Just measure the ingredients carefully and you’re guaranteed a good result. Things i was a bit skeptical about, like the loaf coming away cleanly from the baking pan/bucket, actually work like a charm. This is an expensive toy and you can’t really justify it in terms of saving money vs buying commercial bread. But if you like speciality breads that can be hard to find (like a decent loaf of deli caraway rye in coastal BC!) and are willing to pay for the satisfaction of enjoying them fresh and made with ingredients that you control, whose quality you can be sure of, then this machine could be the ticket. Also if you bake for charity or other types of bread/cake production that are not commercial-scale but a bit more than you can manage singlehanded at home, this machine can crank out that loaf for the fund raiser or potluck in 3-4 hours completely unsupervised, while you do other things. There is also almost no cleanup. You don’t have a kitchen counter covered with flour, hands and apron covered with flour, sticky dough all over the place, multiple mixing bowls to wash. You put all the ingredients in a strict order into the bucket, put the bucket in the machine, push a button and the robot does the rest. Bread making is no longer a laborious whole-afternoon undertaking involving a lot of washing up. This is a truly functional kitchen appliance. Normally I’m skeptical of kitchen gadgets, having been fascinated by and then disappointed in many of them. Often they claim to “save labour” while being fiendishly hard to clean, or are so specialised that you end up using them once a year and regretting the purchase. But this bread robot actually delivers and if you and your family like breads and cakes, you’re likely to use it often. Fresh home made bread is a whole different experience from stale factory bread in a plastic bag from the supermarket. I agonised over this purchase for over a year, despite the rave reviews from a friend of mine who uses her Zoji weekly to make bread for her family. She swore up and down I would never regret it, so I finally took the plunge. And I think she is right. So long as there are no reliability issues, I am not likely to regret this appliance purchase. Highly recommended, lives up to its golden reputation. PS my friend said it was worth gritting my teeth and shelling out extra for the high end model because it has a heating element in the lid to make a proper top crust. Definitely did make a convincing top crust, so I agree with her that it’s worth it. It doesn’t look or feel like real bread if it has a soft steamed top.

Lo mejor de lo mejor muy recomendable

Tengo un hijo con intolerancia al gluten y a los lácteos, y yo soy alergico a la nuez, encontrar un pan que no tenga esos ingredientes es prácticamente imposible, sin embargo con esta máquina he podido hacer pan para sandwitches, pan de chocolate, pan de calabaza, muy deliciosos, Tanto con levadura como sin levadura, gracias al plan de programación manual. Excelente producto.

This machine is definitely an investment, but it is completely worth it when you consider the rising cost of store-bought bread, the build quality, and how great homemade bread tastes. We justified the purchase by figuring that since we go through two loaves of bread weekly, we’d recoup our cost within a year and it turned out to be a very smart choice! The machine is high-quality, easy to operate and clean, and makes consistently amazing bread. We've made banana, white, whole wheat, a white/wheat mix, and raisin bread, it really does it all. You literally just add the ingredients, press a button, and walk away. If you're adding extras like raisins, you just wait for the first beep and pour them in. It's that simple. If you think you'll use it regularly, it is well worth the price tag. My only minor issue is the footprint. It has to be fairly large to make normal-sized loaves, but we solved that by just storing it in a cupboard when we aren't using it.