Give it a miss! (Kenwood Breadmaker BM200)

Member Name: parva4

Product:	Kenwood Breadmaker BM200
Date:	26/08/02 (1770 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Compact, 2 Lb capacity, Simple controls

Disadvantages: Poor results

I've owned the Kenwood breadmaker for about 8 months now and I wish I followed the other persons advice on here who took it back and replaced it with something else!

I have had some acceptable loaves out of it but I think this was more by pure luck than anything else. Generally, loaves just do not rise enough and what you end up with resembles a breeze block. I've followed the recipes to the letter everytime and also tried several ready-mixed packet mixes to no avail.

I did make one discovery though. If you make a 2lb loaf and use the standard loaf setting (1.5 lbs) it rises right up to the lid. Unfortunately, this then means that hot air can't circulate to the top of the loaf and it comes out doughy on top - yuck! The standard loaf setting has an extra 10 minutes proving time over the large loaf setting. Now if the large loaf setting had say 5 minutes longer than it does by default then I'm pretty sure that I'd get perfect loaves every time. Alas, the preset times cannot be adjusted so there's no way to fix this problem. Strangely, making a 1.5 lb loaf on the standard setting results in the same 'bricks' that you get when making a 2 lb loaf on the large setting.

Frankly, I'd steer well clear of this model. It's far from being the cheapest breadmaker and the results are very poor indeed.

Summary: