Friday, we bought one of them there newfangled breadmakers. We have friends who have them and their bread is so superb and we love it so much that they bring a loaf whenever invited here for dinner.

Novices to the process, we bought a few of those boxed mixes for breadmakers. Of course after I logged on to check out the breadmaker, I learned that few people actually use those mixes.

SO started experiment #1 with a boxed mix. The manual for the breadmaker said to put all the liquids into the breadmaker FIRST, flour(s) second, and yeast LAST. It takes 3 hours to complete the "normal" cycle, although there is a QUICKBREAD cycle that takes less than 1 hour. He went with the "normal" cycle. After 3 hours, we had a loaf of something about an inch high with the bottom half inch looking like bread and the top half inch looking like lumped up uncooked dough.

After meeting one of our friends at the health club on Saturday morning, SO came home to say that Bill thought it was the yeast. "It's hard to find good yeast." Bill also said that he'd never tried one of the mixes, so SO made a quick trip to the store for bread flour and yeast for experiment #2 [a recipe I'd printed from the internet.] Following the manual's instructions, we put the ingredients in again...liquids first, flour, then yeast. I aborted the experiment after the second "nead" cycle still hadn't done anything but stir up the liquids at the bottom.

I threw it all out, let the machine cool, and did the opposite of what the manual said. I put yeast in first, then flour, then egg, then milk, then water. Within seconds the machine was rolling everything into a ball. The bread was quite good, actually, but I'd like a little lighter crust on the next batch.

So whaddya think? Should I call the 800 number tomorrow and tell them their manual sucks? Bill thinks that the manual was probably written by folks who didn't speak English. Are Sunbeam products made overseas? Do ya think they'll reimburse me for the few bucks of ingredients that went to waste due to their error?

-- Anita (Anita_S3@hotmail.com), January 27, 2002