Betty Crocker's Best Bread Machine Cookbook: The Goodness of Homemade Bread the Easy Way

Comment: I purchased this book because I purchased a bread machine and the 'look inside' feature allowed me to see it had information that would be useful. The book arrived the day before the bread machine, a Zojirushi BB-CEC20 Home Bakery Supreme 2-Pound-Loaf Breadmaker, and made me eager to get started. I made a list of all the breads I want to try. The photographs will make you hungry! In addition to all the great info and recipes for my 2 lb loaf machine, there are others for smaller machines that I will be able to use as a single or double and use my stand mixer. If you've made bread before, you'll see that this is possible and that doubling will give you 2 loaves instead of one. Many would be great for a party or breakfast with guests, so 2 loaves would be better.

Comment: I purchased the sunbeam bread making machine. I just love it. It is a solid machine and I have made wonderful bread with it.

Comment: This book is awesome and so is my bread machine Oster 5838 (which is a great bread machine for our budget)! They both rock together! I am so excited about both! I could not believe the beauty of this book with all that it has to offer! I came across the book used at a local store and paid $9.98 for it, looks brand new! I am so happy with this book!

This is a jewel for our house hold, we are just happy to be owners of it!... I love the detail of the book and the ease of the book.

Made the butter milk bread recipe and my family and I were so happy! The bread came out so moist and tasty! We will be making more! I took pictures of our bread and showed it to a friend and family members and they were shocked how great the loaves came out! This book rocks!

Happy bread making!

Comment: I owned my breadmachine for about a year before buying this cookbook. I had stuck to the recipes that from the booklet that came with the bread machine. I was looking for new, creative ideas and I got them with this cookbook! What a revelation! So many fantastic bread recipes! I learned to use the dough cycle alone and then shape the bread into whatever shape I wanted and still get perfect loaves of bread. I used to think I couldn't possibly make a braided bread, etc. but Betty Crocker's cookbook gives the best diagrams I have ever seen. They make it look so easy--and it is! We love the seeded breads, the cinnamon raisin bread (to which I add chopped walnuts!), and so many others. I can't wait to continue trying with these great recipes. Also, the photographs are wonderful. I like the binding because it lies flat while I'm reading and preparing the bread. If you've been looking for a bread machine cookbook to add to your repetoire of breads you can proudly say you made yourself, this book is aptly titled: THe BEST Bread Machine Cookbook.

Comment: When I was growing up, my father baked bread for the family on a regular basis. Having had so many of his wonderful loaves, I eventually became interested in learning how. Whereas he made most of his loaves by hand, I began by using a bread machine that I got for Christmas along with three books: "Better Homes and Gardens Best Bread Machine Recipes," "The Bread Machine Magic Book of Helful Hints," and this book. At a later date, I also got Beth Hensperger's "The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook."

My mother had both Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens [BH&G] general cookbooks as far back as I can remember. I had always viewed "Betty" (as one of the editorial reviews refers to the company as being your intimate best friend in the kitchen) as the true authority on food and that BH&G was a second-rate competitor. I suppose that having ate so many of "Betty's" cake mixes over the years didn't hurt by apppealing to my sweet tooth. So, when I began baking bread, I turned to "Betty" first before the other books. Over time, I came to consider her as "Ms. Crocker," not "Betty"!

From day one, I've kept detailed notes about every bread that I've ever made. I ranked them, and I kept notes on how I used them with meals and with snacks. There is no doubt in my mind that BH&G is a superior book.

I've made thirty-three of Ms. Crocker's recipes. Looking back, there are only four of them that I am really fond of: Raisin Cinammon, Pumpkin Seed (which I regularly substitute sunflower seeds for), Old-World Rye, and Cranberry Whole Wheat. For some time, my mother wanted nothing but the Pumpkin Seed recipe, and I cranked it out numerous times with different variations, sometimes adding a little bit of some specialty flour from Bob's Red Mill just to keep from getting bored with the same recipe over and over. I've also done that with some of the other recipes in this book that I like better.

The pictures are great and very glitzy. But, it is not unusual to make something and not have it taste as good as it looks. Now, one of my criteria of what makes a great cook is that the end result is greater than the sum of the parts. In Ms. Crocker's case, it is not unusual to have the end result be less than the sum of the parts. In other words, when you scan down the recipe and look at the ingredients you get all excited and think how wonderful your loaf is going to be--and then it turns out only ok or acceptable on a pass/fail basis but is somehow disappointing. By contrast, the BH&G book is not nearly as glitzy, but I've made thirty-six of those recipes, and my overall ratings of the recipes are significantly higher--and there are more of those recipes that I'm really fond of and want to make over and over.

Over the years, I became more interested in making loaves with a KitchenAid stand mixer and finishing them in the oven. At the beginning, using a bread machine was a big help to me, and I found it very convenient with less clean-up. The BH&G book (as well as Hensperger's to a slightly lesser extent) were very important books for me in my bread baking journey. I hope that this review will serve to steer some of you over to the BH&G book in particular before you purchase this one. BH&G is a much better place to start. I was recently telling my wife about how I no longer viewed Ms. Crocker on the same pedestal that I did when I was growing up. She nodded in agreement, and she said that she has not been impressed with their latest cookbook and that she also preferred BH&G. For me, this book transformed my image of the company for the worse.