Easy to clean, manual easy to follow as well as receipe book, white bread bakes beautifully rises well, the only thing I found that not so good in baking wholewheat bread as does not rise as well, have made Banana Bread, Tomato Bread as pleased with both results, as well it has been value for money and I have cut down on how much bread I am eating and watch the sugar intake also as before was eating to much bought bread which did not fill me up and homemade bread does can use Sweetner, or natural sweetness like honey or syrup but add these with your wet mixture before you add your dry ingredients over all the Best Buy I have made in a long time.
Makes beautiful soft bread. Be sure to use fresh ingredients though. Flour not past it's use by or yeast past it's use by date. The best flour is a soft milled flour which is high in glutens. You can get high gluten soft milled Canadian flour from a well known supermarket beginning with S and this gives great results. You can add seeds or other ingredients to give a real bespoke bread. I have made a malted fruit loaf and this was absolutely delicious. My favourite is sun dried tomato and Parmesan cheese flavour made from scratch but also supermarket ready mixes are great for convenience and you just have to add water to the dry contents. I mostly use the programme 2 which takes 2 hours 50 minutes and allows 2 rises of the dough. My husband prefers denser bread so I use the rapid programme which is only 1 hour but this gives a smaller loaf with a heavier texture generally. Smashing machine if a bit noisier than my first one which I damaged when the bucket fell on the floor. It was cheaper to buy this second hand machine which is in excellent condition than to pay £25+ for a new part. Only downside is you can't stop just cutting another slice. If you love fresh bread you can't go wrong with a Kenwood. Very easy to clean the nonstick bucket but bits do fall into the oven cavity and burn on. This is not so easy to clean but is no detriment to the functionality. Just remember to remove the bucket from the machine BEFORE you put the ingredients in to minimise getting debris into the oven. Also it is a little bit tricky to lift the stirring paddle out of the bucket base but I just leave it in and leave it soaking in a little water to soften the "bread ring" after baking and then it is easy to clean. It is a very neat shaped machine and not too heavy to lift for storing away. We love it.