Shortly after its release, the Breadman Supreme TR2200C was the winner of the Good Housekeeping ‘Good Buy’ Award and the Consumer Digest ‘Best Buy’ Award. High praise indeed. And, to be fair, it’s well deserved; however, the apparatus is not without problems.
So what’s so good about the Breadman TR2200? Well, it has a traditional or horizontal pan shape (this type is always preferable to vertical or hybrid designs) and is capable of making 1, 1.5 and 2 pound loaves. It also comes with a pretty comprehensive list of preset programs. There are ten basic programs: Basic Bread, Quick Basic, Whole Wheat, Quick Whole Wheat, Sweet Bread, Batter/Cake, French Bread, Dough, Pasta Dough and Jam.
If you are an expert user, you will want to use your own bake cycles and this is the biggest selling point of the Breadman Supreme Bread Maker. There are two ways to set the bake times; you can select an existing cycle and modify it or you can define your own bake cycle from scratch. If you choose to modify an existing program, the machine will automatically account for the variations for the 1, 1.5 and 2 pound loaves with the light, medium and dark variations for that cycle. The ‘Personal Recipes’ mode is extremely powerful and allows you to create your own cycle from start to finish. You define virtually every aspect of the process from when and if to use the additional dispenser, preheat time, Knead 1x, Knead 2x, Raise 1x, Pierce, Raise 2x, Shape, Raise 3x, Bake and Hold. warm times. This allows you to create more ambitious breads, such as sourdough bread, which require kneading and proofing times of up to 2 days.
Another big plus is the length of the timer delay. Most other brands come with a maximum of 12 or 13 hours, while the Breadman bread machine allows you to set a maximum delay of 24 hours.
The ‘extras’ dispenser was just mentioned above and is also a nice thing about this machine. You can add your extra ingredients into the dispenser right from the start along with all the other ingredients. This means you can turn it on and go; no need to come back later to add nuts and fruit etc. This is a very useful feature that is not available with most other brands.
But not everything is perfect. Let’s start with some minor complaints that are really more of a wish list than genuine complaints.
There is no option to use the delay timer with the dough cycle, which is a bit of a pain. Also, you can’t use the ‘extras’ dispenser with the dough cycle either. So if you want to make a batter with fruits and/or nuts, you will have to mix them by hand. The dispenser could also be a bit bigger.
Interestingly, there is no on/off switch. If you enter the wrong settings, there is no way to turn off the bread machine except by unplugging it.
Getting a little more serious; Breadman Ultimate is one of the loudest bread machines you will find. One hopes this is because it has a powerful engine.
As said, this Breadman is a horizontal bread maker. However, it comes with only one mixing paddle, unlike other horizontal bread makers like the Zojirushi which come with two. This can cause the ingredients to mix incompletely, leaving unmixed flour in the corners of the pan. This doesn’t happen every time, it seems more prevalent in heavier mixes, but it does require you to step in and help mix the ingredients correctly.
Another serious complaint is about the quality of the pan, or rather the lack of it. The Breadman is an expensive bread machine, so it’s anyone’s guess why it’s supplied with a cheap, slim pan, perhaps for cost savings. However, there are many customer reports that they have to replace this in a very short amount of time and it cost around $40 each, it is expensive.
Despite some shortcomings, it’s a very good appliance that does an excellent job of baking bread. I would recommend it and the vast majority of those who bother it are very satisfied with its performance. Most reviews of the Breadman Supreme bread machine give it a high rating.