bit-tech Shopping: Oster 5838 ExpressBake Breadmaker, White

Rating: 8

Time with product: 1 Day

Strengths: Good quality, easy to follow manual with recipes. Reasonable price.

Weaknesses: None

Summary: I just made my first loaf and boy was it easy! You just add the ingredients set the control to the type of bread and the hardness of the crust and hit start...in three hours you have a perfect loaf of bread, its that simple. This machine is of good quality, it does not make a lot of noise, no mess afterwards. And its one of the least expensive machines. I could not ask for more. In all fairness I rated this a v.good since I have not had it for very long. After a while I will come back and re-rate it. If it holds up it will be a deffinite highly recommended.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 1 Month

Strengths: expressbake function, easy to use and clean, neat design

Weaknesses: none yet

Summary: I couldn't decide what to choose between Panasonic and other brands, and one of my friends recommended this Oster brand. I and my other friend bought this machine the next day, and we both are so satisfied with it so far!

Rating: 8

Time with product: 3 Days

Strengths: Fast, does not occupy a lot of space, quite.

Weaknesses: Does not have a crust option when you use express baking option.

Summary: This is a pretty good bread maker. Make sure to use the right ingredients as they are in the recipes, otherwise you will have a disappointment. Especially use the flour that it is asking. We have made basic and whole wheat bread so far. We especially loved the 58 minutes baking option. It is very fast and breads are nice. I wish it had a crust option with express baking, but not a big deal. It makes medium crust with express baking. Other than that, I have not seen a major weaknesses. We liked it so far.I would recommend this bread maker to everybody.

Rating: 10

Time with product: 5 Days

Strengths: Reliable. Makes excellent loaves. Enough baking choices.

Weaknesses: The Oster brand name wears off slowly after only 3 years

Summary: Don't waste your money on any other brand. This thing is bulletproof. I have made pizza dough, pita dough, and innumerable breads in this thing. I just sits on my counter and works when I need it (almost every week).

Rating: 8

Time with product: 90 Days

Strengths: Handles whole grain breads, doughs and multiple crust options. The expressbake really does let you make a loaf in an hour (it's a denser texture but still tasty). Has a delay timer setting. Quiet.

Weaknesses: The dry ingredients sometimes accumulate in the corners of the horizontal bread pan in small amounts so I watch through the window when the machine starts and use a spatula if needed.

Summary: After evaluating features and pricing on numerous breadmakers and reading hundreds of reviews, I decided to purchase this one am very pleased that I did. I was impressed with all the features especially the express baking, where it only takes 58 minutes to bake a loaf of bread from scratch. It makes 1, 1.5 and 2 lb loaves. It bakes basic, wheat, sweet, french, makes dough, and bakes jam. If not using the expressbake, the average time is 3 hours. It has three crust settings (light, medium and dark). It comes with a spiral cookbook, full of recipes. Having never used a breadmaker before, I was not sure what to expect in terms of ease of use and was pleasantly surprised at how effortless it really is. I have made wheat, rye and sour dough bread with ease and lots of variations of dough including pizza dough and croissant dough.The machine is very quiet when operating and has a window on the top. It is such an easy appliance to clean up with the non stick pan and it takes up little counter space.I mentioned as a weakness that dry ingredients sometimes accumulate in the corners of the horizontal bread pan. This mainly occurs when I make the small 1 lb. loaf when there isn?t as much dough to reach the corners of the pan. I have read this same comment in other reviews of horizontal breadmakers but I did not find a vertical breadmaker that had all the features I wanted. This is not a big enough deal to stop me from purchasing this again.