To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. If it seems too hard to follow then just compare it with the bread dough you'd make manually and find out the right liquid-flour ratio.

Enjoying a slice of your own homemade bread, slathered in butter or dipped in oil is one of life’s greatest pleasures. I have made bread for many years by hand, however for a straightforward loaf ready in time for breakfast, or for preparing dough for some specialty bead or a pizza, this is great. Big on flavour and simple to make, this delicious soda bread makes a nice change from sandwiches come lunch time. The maker beeps if you need to add extra ingredients and beeps at the end, it then goes straight into a 1 hour keep warm mode. Overall a nice little machine that makes nice bread that lasts around 3 days if put in a plastic bag, so well worth it.

We tested it with an 86% wholemeal recipe but even this had slightly quirky ingredients, including lemon juice (perhaps taking the place of the vitamin C powder that some recipes feature) and a combination of butter and skimmed milk powder, rather than one or the other. One disappointment though - and this is possibly demonstrative of the 'throw away age' in which we live, was that after just over two years the spindle which connects the machine with the kneading paddle came loose from pan through which it passes.

Seem like a design fault to me, the bread pan is very flimsy and I guess it gets knocked out of shape during kneading. Then, don't use more than a tea spoon of sugar because too much sugar can make the yeast produce a huge airbubble inside the dough, producing bad results. Thirdly it is a good idea in general to use alive cake yeast because it activates in a lower temperature and is usually more active than the dry.Having used another brand of bread maker, and then gave up due to density of the loaf, I came across this one.