Side by Side Comparison of: Hamilton Beach vs Brand: Harvard Common Press

In the past year and a half, I've had two children diagnosed with Celiac Disease and a husband with a strong gluten sensitivity. This bread machine has been a LIFE SAVER!! The hubby has taken on the responsibility of making gluten free bread (because a "regular loaf" of GF bread is half the size of a regular loaf of bread and twice as expensive!) I bought this bread machine in conjunction with The Gluten Free Bread Machine Cookbook, and it has performed beautifully to make us affordable bread for my family! It does have a GF setting, but we actually use the express 1-hour setting with the recipes in the book.My only issue, and believe me, it's a small one, is I can't find where to buy an extra basin! We could knock even more loaves out if we had an extra basin to go with our extra paddle that it comes with!I'm sorry that I can't review this machine on other settings. I bought it specifically for the GF setting, which we used once and it worked great, but I'd imagine that the other settings would work super just as well, for folks who don't have to turn their kitchens upside down when a Celiac diagnosis enters their lives!

This is the appliance I never knew I needed! I saw it on an amazon warehouse deal and thought, what the heck lets try one. I am blown away. I have been baking most of my husband's bread for several years. He has celiacs disease and must have a gluten free diet. This bread maker has a gluten free setting which works awesome. I've made loaf after loaf and they've all come out great! And it's so easy. I just have to dump my ingredients in and walk away. It's never been so easy. And Ive discovered it does other things I had no idea a bread maker could do! I have made several batches of jam in it and they all come out great. This poor machine has run for days straight now making one thing after another as I tested it out. I wasn't sure I was going to keep it at first because I didn't think I needed another appliance- I tried it on a whim. I'm so glad I did- it has really made my life much easier!

I purchased this breadmaker as a gift for my wife on Mother's Day, and it was a hit. She is a woman with every high-end kitchen item there is (think Vitamix, KitchenAid, and Cuisinart), but I had convinced her for many years not to buy a breadmachine because such machines seem get stuffed into to the back corner of the pantry, never to be seen from again. Not so with this unit. With kids at home, we have used it to bake a variety of breads (white, maple wheat, cinnamon, etc.), typically 4-5 loaves per week, and the results have been consistently good. The included recipes are simple and tasty. The automatic "hold warm" function at the end of baking is a nice feature. The mixing paddle has never been left in the bread, and it leaves almost no gap or hole in the bottom of the loaf.A few helpful quicktips:1. Place the unit in the middle of the counter (the instructions note this, but worth repeating). The machine gently vibrates during kneading.2. Add ingredients in the order they are listed in the recipe, and use a butter knife to level your measurements (a heaping cup or tablespoon is very different from an actual cup or tablespoon).3. Place the finished loaf on a cooling rack for 10 minutes before cutting into it.4. Enjoy healthy, fresh bread!

I bought this bread maker because I had found a low-carb bread machine recipe. I have made two loaves and one I doubled the recipe. I did this on setting 3 and they have turned out great ! I have also made whole wheat , banana bread and a orange cake loaf for my husband. It doesn't get much easier than this folks. No mixing bowls and beaters to clean ! One pan clean up ! 😀👍

Very nice. Supplement your bread machine repertoire with this book. Not only recipes but general information about baking and using machines. I didn't know there was that much to learn about vanilla...

Simply the best. The info can be overwhelming at first but stay with it, it clears and you have a gold mine. All those things you wonder about are in this book. And the rescipes .....oh yummy. I have not had a fail and I admit I sort of ad lib sometimes...add egg, whole milk etc. when its not called for but its fun to experiment and it all comes out yum.

I bought this along with a Cuisinart convection bread maker and Ive tried a few of the recipes. Wow, this lady knows how to bake !! I made honey corn masa bread and potatoe bread , also cinnamon swirl bread, to name a few. All of these scored an A with me. She was able to adapt these recipes to use with any bread machine and if you follow her instructions to the letter these breads turn out perfect and absolutely delicious . I think my convection machine though, is superior to the regular bread machines. This book is five star, don't hesitate to buy !! You wont be sorry !!

If you love homemade bread or want to know how to make delicious ones, this is the book for you. Soo many recipes you'll be finding reasons to bake them all before you finish the last recipe. You an even make some without a bread machine. We tried them both ways.

Absolutely fantastic recipe book!!! There is much more than just recipes in this book, though. Reading all the additional material included in the book was like attending a cooking class by a master bread maker. There were many great tips and ideas. Baked nearly two dozen recipes and every one comes out perfect! These recipes were far better than the ones that came with the bread machine. Author gives you a template to create your own breads, as well. I have stopped buying bread at the grocery store entirely, and have made jam, pasta, and pizza dough from this book in addition to bread. This book is amazing!

Every recipe I've tried has turned out beautifully-up until tonight. I have an inexpensive Oster bread machine and it has done a wonderful job with these recipes. Tonight I tried the Chocolate Challah recipe-it is a total flop-stuck to sides of pan and not rising at all. I realize I might have made an error but I've read the recipe several times and don't know how it failed. This recipe is quite rich but sounded delicious, I love the whole wheat recipes, the rye breads are fabulous and the Sour Cream Bread is to die for!! Of course, how can it be bad - it uses a whole cup of sour cream ! I thing the book is worth the price and I will just keep baking bread and see what works and what doesn't. I've made about 10 loaves of bread this month-all perfect- so I guess I was ready for a failure.By the way-have they ever published corrections to any of these recipes? Just in case it's not my mistake?

works well. still experimenting recipes but I love it so far.

Well made, but I find that 1.5lb comes out better than 2lb. I wanted to buy a additional pan, but it's very costly. Overall, it's a good machine for basic bread making.

Nice for the price

Works great! No problems other then the beeps are really loud

This is the first bread machine I've owned so I don't have anything to compare this to, but it works as described, has a lot of different programs and the bread pan and paddle are a dream to clean. I don't see this machine "walking" as much as I've read, which was a pre-purchase concern for me.

Just got the bread machine so I have only made 3 loaves of bread. The instructions are clear and comprehensive. I plan on copying and laminating some of the more essential pages for future use. As long as you follow the directions- all is well. I tried to rush a loaf and my flock of chickens got to feast on the failure. The unit is compact but with the lid open, it won't fit under my kitchen cabinets. This means that when the bread is done, I have to turn the machine sideways to remove the baking pan. I am willing to put up with this because the machine works so well. I just ate a warm buttered slice of French bread...YUM!

Yes, w book is packed with lots of recipes for your bread machine, but should you buy it? If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't buy it. Although the recipes are great, I just wanted basic bread machine recipes. If all you want are basic bread recipes, the King Arthur Flour website has a wide variety of bread and dough recipes available for FREE. If, however, you want a larger variety of recipes and more in depth explanations of the art of bread-making, this is the book for you.

I enjoy lots of wonderful recipes throughout this book. Very easy recipes to read and understand. If you are new to bread making this is a good book to have in your collection!

Very good book on the subject, unless you are married to gluten free nonsense. All the recipes here, more or less, demand more, not less, gluten.

Great book for bread machine recipes but the Kindle version is not as useful as a physical book for something like this. The designer that made the kindle version could have put more thought into where the page breaks etc (like they do on the printed book). And there are mistakes in the Kindle version (see the White Country Bread recipe for example - no measure for potato flakes and obviously a mistake). Also one suggestion to the author is provide the weight in grams. More specific and easier for bakers using scales.

This is a fantastic cookbook, I use the recipes in here every week and have found a few reliable picks that the kids love for daily sandwiches as well as pizza dough and tons of interesting breads to try out. Our favorites are banana sandwich bread, maple sandwich bread, and semolina pizza dough. At first I was disappointed that all the measurements are volume based (cups, etc) instead of using weight for the flour, but I've found I still get consistent results by carefully scooping and leveling my flour. I expect to continue experimenting with these recipes for years to come.

I bought this book with my breadmaker. I'm glad I did, because the number of recipes that came with the breadmaker was appallingly slim.I've made several types and they've all come out great. Be warned, however, that most of the recipes ask for gluten, so if you don't have some, get it. It's easily available in your grocer's baking aisle. And the "Orientation" section is a good read if you are new to making bread in a machine. She also includes a chart to convert measuring cups to weights for measuring ingredients (and after doing weighed amounts for flour for my last couple of loaves I highly recommend picking up a small digital kitchen scale and using it in your baking).Some notes:- I made the Dutch Sugar Bread and it was AMAZING, but the cubes did scratch the corners of my bread pan. This is my fault; the author warned that she's heard of this happening. It does not appear to have affected the non-stick nature of the pan, but I will be more careful next time. Of course, I also didn't get the little gooey pockets of sugar, so I might just use granulated or totally crushed sugar cubes next time. But the flavor was out of this world!- Under pizza dough, she has 1 and 2lb recipes. Unless you have a giant pizza stone, make the smaller batch. I only have a 12" stone, and my last two crusts have turned out impossibly thick, almost like deep-dish. Incredibly good, but very thick. I thought this might be because of the rise period after you turn out the dough, but now I'm thinking that I've got too much dough for my stone.- There is no recipe for cinnamon raisin bread, which I find almost unbelievable. But there are recipes for raisin bread, so I'm sure you can add cinnamon to taste. But still - that's such a staple bread (IMO) that I can't believe it's missing.But well worth the purchase and a really good reference.

The loafs are shaped funny because of the insert. Works well though.

most breads have sunken top. instructions say it is caused by too much water and/or yeast. decreased the amounts with same result. only bread that has the raised top is white bread. type of crust selected isn't what usually appears. disappointing machine.

It bakes the bread too dark..even burned a little. I can't change the setting for wheat bread to "light"

Okay for baking breads, but the dough cycle must run too warm, my dough is always too wet and sticky. I have had many bread machines and encountered this issue before, if you use it for dough, be prepared to adjust recipes a ton.

I would give the product a higher rating but I encountered problems after the initial use. I like ease with which I can bake a wide variety of breads and the easily understandable operating instructions. But after using the machine one time, the motor operating the kneading accessory which mixes the dough did not work anymore and regrettably I had to return the machine as defective.

It seems to work well. My one complaint is that a clump of dry flour is always left in a corner and you have to push it into the dough ball manually. So you can't set this and walk away until the dough ball forms and you can do this. Annoying and a function of the shape of the bowl and paddle length I think. OK for the price.

Not sure why, but some of these were not tested right. They are a total failure ...

I bought this book and hoped it would be very easy to understand and use. The reading is easy but the recipes seem very dated. The types of flour and the use of gluten separate might be useful as a modification to a recipe but the recipes seem to belong to someone making the bread by hand. I tried one recipe and decided that an online cookbook was more valuable to me. Disappointed.

Though there are many great recipes which I have tried, most seem to be too fancy for everyday needs

I was really excited about this book from the reviews, but was less impressed when I realized nearly every recipe asks to add gluten. I just use bread flour, I don't own gluten. It would be nice if there were more recipe variety in that sense, being so many rely on an ingredient I don't keep. I ended up using Google search for recipes way more than this.

If you are looking for recipes for basic breads this is not the book for you. However, if you are open to trying a large variety of breads this is your book. I did however really enjoy the gluten free chapter

To be honest I haven't tried any recipes from this book yet, and will likely update my review accordingly once I do, but I wanted to write a quick review warning people of some very confusing information about yeast in this book.I got a bread machine and all the basic ingredients for it and made a couple loafs of bread from the instruction manual, so I got this book to make some more interesting breads. The first recipe I looked at said I had to use X amount of SAF yeast or Y amount of bread machine yeast. The yeast I had been using was Red Star active dry yeast. I looked up yeast in the appendix to see what SAF (a brand) yeast was equivalent to, and, to my dismay, found a section in the book saying that active dry yeast and fresh yeast should NEVER be used in a bread machine. This was extremely confusing as active dry yeast was the yeast that my bread machine's manual said I should use for all settings except express bake.Further searching through the cookbook led me to the introductory section about yeast and it's various forms. Hensperger claims there are five varieties of yeast: active dry, fresh cake, fast-acting/instant, bread machine, and quick-rise. After extensive internet research, I have determined that this information is WRONG. fast-acting/instant, bread machine, and quick-rise are all different names for the fastest acting form of yeast. Active dry yeast is what Hensperger refers to as SAF yeast (I think she maybe got confused because most of the labelling on SAF packaging is in French?), and can be used in a bread machine perfectly fine. The only kind of yeast you shouldn't use in a bread machine is fresh cake yeast.Hopefully this information helps other readers.EDIT: I tried a number of simpler recipes from this book. I found that with my Oster bread machine the bread always came out much larger and heavier than expected from the recipe amount, as in the 1.5 lbs loaf would overflow my 2 lbs bread machine. The recipes are tasty enough, but I find it difficult to get the density right.

I've used it several times and exactly followed the instructions and ingredients provided with the machine but the bread never comes out fluffy or soft. Not sure if all bread machines do the same or if this is just an issue with this brand. I will not buy this brand again.

Easy to use, BUT it is very, very difficult to remove the bread from the pan. It is a project that takes quite a bit of effort, shaking,using a plastic knife, more shaking, husband and wife taking turns; this goes on for about 10 or 15 minutes. I am sorry I didn't invest in a better machine.

The paddle gets stuck in every batch and comes out with the loaf. It leaves a big cavity in the middle from trying to get the dumb thing out. The bread comes out ok, but this makes it hard to use as sandwich bread as there is a gash in every slice.

Tried five recipes in this and none of them cooked well. Will be donating this.

I have not been able to get one good loaf of bread from this machine.

I purchased this in July of 2014. It quit working in Feb of 2015. The paddle froze and some kind of black machine oil leaked out . For some time hadn't been able to get the paddle out but it still worked well until the pan assembly locked up. Tried to find a Replacement pan but was unable to find one anywhere. Ended up junking it and getting one from Craigslist like new for $30. This way if it dies after a few months, won't be much money lost. New one works well and paddle comes out of pan after a little soaking..new one is a Sunbeam. I do see the price has come down on this one..but still n ot worth it..in my opinion..

We've had terrible luck geeting these recipes to work in our bread machine. But, to be fair, I don't know whether the issue is the recipes or our bread machine.

this book is outdated

I bought the paperback. I agree with the reviewer who complained about the font and ink. The font is too small, probably to fit in all the extraneous stuff into 643 pages. To add insult to injury, the ink is light brown. The ingredient lists are in the same typeface on a very green background. It is very difficult to read and use. I am surprised a professional cookbook writer would allow a book like this to be published, it is not user friendly. I am not sure if I even want to try any recipes after reading some of the reviews.

Lots of speacial ingredients like vital wheat gluten, instant potato, dry milk ect...Free online recipes as good or better.

More like a textbook about bread machines than a cookbook about making bread in a Bread Machine. The format of this book was exactly like a textbook but the recipes seemed to be secondary over the subject of bread machines.There is a lot of unnecessary information in this book and I did not like the fact that it is over 15 years old, it was last published in 2000. And bread machines, peoples' tastes and recipes have changed a lot since then. Plus this book makes it seem like making bread in a Bread Machine is a major undertaking and it is not. This book could easily turn learning how to use your bread machine into a daunting experience. Which is not why you bought a cookbook for it in the first place.I disliked this cookbook, so much that I sent it back. And instead, I got Donna Washburn & Heather Butt's, "300 Best Bread Machine Recipes." And I am so glad, I did because this is a much better cookbook and I am making fantastic and tasty bread.

This is a great book but only if you buy the print edition. There are numerous errors and omissions in the ingredient lists and quantities in several of the recipes. Some are obvious and easy to spot but there may be others that aren't so obvious.As a result, I can't trust the recipes which makes the Kindle edition practically worthless to me. I returned it and reported the errors to Amazon. Hopefully, the publisher will proofread it more carefully and issue an update. I hope so because I'd love to own it. The author is one the best known authorities on breadmaking in general and in bread machine baking in particular.

Looks great, easy to program. However, and it's a BIG however, when it's in the mixing cycle, the unit literally bounces itself down the counter top. I had to stand watcth for 45 minutes to prevent it from bouncing off the counter and onto the floor.

The motor failed within one month of purchase. We never did anything with it except make the basic bread (about 5 times) and always followed the recipe and instructions.The directions were good, though, and when it did work, made fine bread.

I really don't like this product. I have used it 3 times and each time the loaves are misshapen.The basic loaves have good texture.

It squeaks! It was awful. I was so looking forward to using this, but was very disapointed. So back it goes.

The product that we received did not work correctly, did not mix the dough enough or rise. I waited too long to use it the first time, and was too late to return it. Maybe I just got a bad one.

This is the 2nd one I have gotten. The first one would not warm the dough during the rising cycle. I sent that back for a replacement. This one made one great loaf and the next time I tried the paddle won't mix any ingredients. It isn't even trying as you can't hear the motor even attempting to move it. Going to switch to a better brand.

The cookbook does not have any images; it would have been extremely helpful to see the end product before attempting to create it. I am using You Tube instead. Much more helpful!!!

Not what I expected for recipes.

So far I have tried 3 of the white bread recipes. For all of them I used the dough cycle and baked in the oven. None of the recipes that I tried produced a light fluffy loaf.I tried the milk bread recipe that was quite chewy, then I tried the honey white recipe that was very dense and heavy, then I tried the homestyle white that was spongy and heavy. All the recipes tried were fair but nothing fantastic. I'm going to try the hamb/hotdog buns and the english muffin recipes but am not expecting anything special as the other recipes were just mediocre. Found a recipe for fluffy white on the web. So far this book has not impressed me and as it is I wouldn't recommend it.

This is not the bread book that I thought it was. You have to be experienced with your breadmaker to enjoy using this book....it isn't for newbies for sure...

I rarely write reviews but I was so disappointed by this book that I felt moved to share my dismay and even warn others not to buy it. I've made lots of good bread in my Zojirushi from borrowed recipes, but the first recipe I made out of this book just yielded a panful of baked crumbs! I couldn't even imagine what went wrong--I had followed the recipe to the letter, and it wasn't a case of bad yeast (although the author's discussion of yeast is confusing and makes one doubt the validity of every recipe in the book). I wasted 4 and a half cups of good whole wheat flour on this recipe, not to mention 3 and a half tablespoons of vital wheat gluten--now if that couldn't make the crumbs stick together, nothing could! I wish I had taken these one-star reviews more seriously before I bought this book. I'm wondering now how to return the first book I've ever returned to Amazon....

I really wanted to love this kindle book. But i dont. The problem isnt the recipes, they are well authored, there is a lot of information about the ingredients, there are several variations of many recioes. The problem is the kindlization of the book. There are two indexes, Subjects and Recipes. Neither contains page numbers or location numbers or hot links. So they are just a list of things you could,at best, consider to be search terms. However, you cannot rely on their finding anything useful. Case in point: the subject index contains the phrase "tips for starters" as in sourdough starters. If you enter this term in your kindle search, you get one result: the listing in the Subject Index. Circular and useless. I own many Kindle cookbooks. This one is poorly crafted and frustrating to use. Stick to paper on this one.