I am an old man unable to shop, my groceries are delivered fortnightly, and I have been so fed up with eating stale supermarket bread. But I am rubbish at cookery and it was not until I saw the almost unanimous 5 star reviews for this product that I even considered baking my own. I live alone so the small size loaf is just what I wanted - it would last me 3-4 days. Even so, it was not until I saw that I could use a proprietary bread mix that I went ahead and placed an order. At the same time I ordered some Carr`s bread mix, white and wholemeal, from Lakeland.
The item was delivered very promptly, well packaged and in good order and has worked perfectly for me right from the start. I take care to accurately weigh the ingredients, water first (1mlitre of water weighs 1 gm) and my Boots scales are accurate to ~ 2 gm I have tried white mix, wholemeal mix and 3/4 white 1/4 wholemeal. All have been delicious but the white especially so.
The kneading blade almost always remains in the loaf and has to be fished out with the tool provided. I do this carefully, after the loaf has cooled, and it is not a problem.
As others have said, it is important to note the time of startup since there is no indication of completion on the machine. I set an external timer for the completion time.
I have since ordered some Hovis bread mixes from Tesco but have not yet tried them out.
I rate this as one of my most sucessful purchases.