Bread Machine recommendation. Want one NOT made in China.

[Ook]

I have four bread machines, and they are all candidates for the trash can. One has motor problems, three have bread pans that don't last (the shaft seizes). None of them have lasted me a year. Not surprisingly, all of them are made in China.

So, what is a good quality bread machine not made in China? I'm willing to pay a bit extra for it, I've certainly paid enough for the junk machines I already have. I don't need bells and whistles, I just need something that I can run 3-4 times a week. I seldom let it bake the bread, I just use it to nead the dough. I prefer to take the ready dough and shape it myself - I have a couple of nice Ecko french bread shaped pans that work nicely.

Failing to find a good bread machine not made in China, can anyone recommend a good bread dough neading machine? I'm not sure what they are called - I've seen them from time to time, heavy duty mixers that can make bread dough. Again - I want one NOT made in China.

[Harry Johnson]

Most people buy the cheapest product on the shelf. To deliver the lowest price possible, US manufacturing has forced to move to China.

Consequently, the remaining 5% of us that are willing to pay extra for a high-quality product are screwed.

About all you can do is buy the cheapest machine, use it till it craps and then toss it on the heap at your local landfill.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Don't always blame China. Blame the (often US) designers that specified the material. It was probably designed and engineered here and them made for cheap in China, to the specifications they were given.

Get a Made in the USA Kitchen Aid mixer for the dough and use the oven for baking. Your hands make good dough kneading implements barring a lot of arthritis.

[Duesenberg]

On 2/1/2012 5:59 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote: .

Or consider trying a couple no-knead recipes? Just a thought...

[Jules Richardson]

Yes, all too common unfortunately :-(

I'm not sure when home-use bread machines really started appearing; my usual solution to these kinds of problems is to find something that was built years ago, but was designed well, then do any necessary restoration work on it.

cheers

Jules

[Attila.Iskander]

I have migrated away from the bread machines (Panasonic) that did a good job for me Bought them used at the Goodwill for peanuts. ( House & Cabin) I have since bought a Cuisinart Stand Mixer The big one can do dough for 2# loaves at a time. A bit more time involved in making the bread, but far more options of the results

[Attila.Iskander]

A good mixer will do most of the kneading for you .

[Peter]

I don't think you are going to find a home use bread machine that has sealed, permanently lubricated, ball bearing type bearings. They all seem to use some variant of rubber/plastic friction fit seals where the shaft of the beater blade penetrates the bread pan. I've had 2 cheap bread machines each last more than 8 years by (1) minimizing the amount of water soak time I use (generally about 5 minutes) to soften the residual crust around the shaft and seal after each bake job, (2) manually rotating the shaft by inserting the blade and rotating it for about 1 minute after drying and before storing, and (3) repeating step #2 immediately prior to adding ingredients for another loaf. I generally make 5-6 loafs/month. Although the shaft sometimes starts with considerable friction, a minute or so of manual rotation always seems to free it up. If the shaft is really seized, put a small puddle of cooking oil in the bottom of the pan and let it soak for about 20 minutes, pour out the oil, put on the blade and try to force the shaft to rotate.

If all else fails, I found that even after I badly damaged a seal by using WD-40 on the underside of the pan, to the point where the shaft was vertically loose, there was no leakage when preparing a loaf if I added most of the dry ingredients before adding the water to the pan. Even early in the kneading process, the dough is too viscous to creep through the damaged seal.

My main gripe is that after using each new machine for only a few months, the finished loaf tears from the beater blade when you dump the finished loaf out of the pan. Well lubricating surface of the blade with cooking oil doesn't seem to help. Very mysterious given that I don't see any surface defects in the "no-stick" coating on the blade.

[trader4]

That may happen in 5% of the cases. In the other 95%, the US company knows damn well what they're getting. And if any of it makes it to the consumer, it's mostly the US company's fault anyway. They are supposed to have the appropriate quality control processes in place to prevent crap from getting through. And a responsible US company would stop doing business with any vendors that try to pull such stunts.

Some how I don't believe that.

[Steve Barker]

[DerbyDad03]

I understand that this Zojirushi unit is supposed to be the Top Choice in bread machines for home use.

Pricey, but supposed well worth it.

I was going to buy one, but my daughter bought me a Panasonic unit for my birthday and by the time I returned to the on-line vendor and paid the shipping and re-stocking fees, the overall out of pocket expense to end up with the Zojirushi unit would have been too much.

The feature I like the best is the fact that it makes "regular shaped" loaves, not the tall ones like most bread machines.

[Edge]

I used to work for a customer service company that took the complaints of consumers through their 800 numbers. Each complaint was classified, grouped and analyzed by the parent company. Any deviation from normal stats were flagged. The defective products could be tracked by production runs to the manufacturers country, factory, date, time, shift. All products would have records of the materials used as well as the labor. I agree with Trader4. With the multi-national manufacturers like Panasonic, nobody can just substitue inferior material and get away with it for long. It is the parent company that specifies a plastic cog or a metal one. Ryobi uses plastic parts in their drills. DeWalt uses metal parts.

[DerbyDad03]

All that stuff about tracking complaints and tracing them back to the shift sounds good on paper.

However, if you've ever heard the term "garbage in, garbage out" so then you shouldn't put much faith in the process.

I recently called Panasonic about a bread machine I received as a gift. I gave them the model number and asked a question about the relationship between their loaf sizes of "Medium, Large and Extra- Large" and some recipes I had that listed the size in weights (1.5 lb and 2 lb).

The rep repeated the model number back to me and then looked something up and said that "Medium, Large and Extra-Large" meant 1 lb, 1.5 lb and 2 lb loafs.

Since I still had the box right in front of me I asked her: "So why does the box says it makes "up to 2.5 lb loaves"?

She put me on hold and came back to tell me that she had looked up the wrong model number and should have told me 1.5, 2 and 2.5.

The point here is that unless the reps really know what they are doing, the data they enter will not be accurate and the trcking data will not be accurate. We've all had situations where we knew more about the product that we were calling about than the CSR at the 800 number, so I don't put much faith in the accuracy of their 'tracking" systems.

Garbage In, Garbage Out, Garbage Tracking

[trader4]

That is just totally bogus. There is a whole process of qualifying vendors. A responsible company doesn't just find a company in China or anywhere and then take and ship their product. You inspect their facitlities, see what they are doing, do random quality inspection of incoming product. This isn't anything new. This is how business has been done for a LONG time.

You ship me garbage and you're out

We've all had situations where we knew more

Customer service is a whole different process than making sure what's coming in meets the company's quality specs.

[DerbyDad03]

trader4,

I'm not sure who you are "bogusing" here.

I was responding to Edge's comment that these Customer Service organizations tally consumer complaint data and use it to trace problems all the way back to the shift that built the unit.

Based on my experience with CSR's representing countless companies, and having worked on the management side of IT help desks, I would put no faith in the assertion that they can pinpoint a problem that (allegedly) occurred during C shift on March 3, 2011 at the Yung Min Teng factory. I just don't believe that the folks wearing the headsets are entering data accurate enough to do that. I've experienced it as a consumer and I've seen it in practice at work.

My "Garbage In, Garbage Out" referred to the data entered by the CSR's, not to any product.

[chaniarts]

it depends upon the company. i'm a csr for a computer company, and yes, we can track hardware problems down that far.

[chaniarts]

it depends upon the company. i'm a csr for a computer company, and yes, we can track hardware problems down that far.

not only that, but we know which other customers have it, and can (and have) proactively contacted them to arrange for a replacement part to be installed.

[Steve]

Ook wrote in news:0f05cc4a-7b03-4f3a-a740-4c31dfc31146 @n8g2000pbc.googlegroups.com:

I bought my wife one of the Zojirushi machines two years ago. This is her third one and is by far the best one she has ever had. I seems absolutely bulletproof in the two years that she has been using it. Look at Amazon and they get great reviews.

[Caesar Romano]

On Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:40:07 -0500, Duesenberg wrote Re Re: Bread Machine recommendation. Want one NOT made in China.:

How about buying Wonder Bread?

[Ed Pawlowski]

One of our customers provides us with a fabricated metal part consisting of some steel wire welded in a grid and a couple of thin steel strips and it is bent to a "U" shape. We use it in a product we mold for them.

They have two suppliers, one in Ohio, the other in China. One arrives perfectly stacked in crates on pallets and every part is identical and usable. The other arrives tacked on pallets falling over, bottom parts are bent and scrap and sometimes have to be slightly bent to fit right. Would you prefer to buy the cheaper and better?

We also buy some tooling from China. Quality is as good, delivery is half the time and half the price. I'd rather buy US products, but our customers will not pay the price.

Yes, some junk comes from China, but it is often the crappy designs the US management is sending over in search of bigger profits. Thinner metal, smaller bearings, you've seen it. Appliances have been downgraded for years , both here and abroad.