Russell Hobbs Breadman 12683 Breadmaker

18th September 2014

Update:

I contacted many Russell Hobbs sellers for the usermanual. Finally I got the right address: [servicedepartment@eu.spectrumbrands.com] who was so kind to send me a PDF file with the correct manual.

I also hope to find the recipies some day soon. The cards were not in the box.

For now I am using my own recipies, with adjusted programms. Every other day I make a wholeweat nutbread. And inbetween I make a sesame and raisin bread. It makes good pizza dough and I use that about every ten days. There is no program for pasta dough, so I made a custom program for that. I use an adjusted jam program for making the pasta saus with fresh ingredients.

It will take some time to explore all this machine will do for me. So I hope it will last. The baking tin came with a small dent inside, that did not bother me at first. But it shows a tiny spot of missing nonstick coating. The bread comes out perfectly anyway, but the coating also protects the thin bakingtin from corrosion. I hope this spot will not become a whole in the tin. I have not seen these baking tins for the Breadman 12683 for sale.

And I am not pleased with the use of "tamper resistant screws" that prevent me to repair the faulty electric wiring of the machine. I have had e few shocks from it, touching the metal outside while connected to the current.

So, while the design is excellent, the make of my machine is not flawless.

By Ingrid

5th August 2014

After using one of the first breadmachines for many years, the breadpan started leeking. Panasonic offered no replacement parts for my model, so I had to look for another machine.

At a fleemarket a came across an old LeCAF breadmaker. Excellent strong kneeding motor for pasta dough and bread dough, but no good in baking bread.

The cheap build of a new Inventum BM86 surprised me. It makes good jam, but fails to mix breaddough without manual help. Just a case of bad design. The dough hook throws ingredients into the corners of the breadpan and does not reach far enough to incorporate the cornered ingrediënts in the doughmix. After you helped by pushing the flour to the kneading hook during kneading, it does bake well however. But it has no bake-only function. It beeps for adding extra ingrediënts, but does not pause for you to do so.

My new Russell Hobbs 12683 Breadman Healthy Options looks inside just as cheap as all new breadmakers nowadays. First testround showed a breadpan shaking in the machine, making a terrible noise.

But from using the Inventum I already knew this problem and the simple solution: Just bend the clips in the machine a little until they hold the breadpan well in place. Problem solved.

Now, what is so good about this Russell Hobbs machine?

As many new breadmakers, it has plenty standard programs. But this machine allows each step of all programs to be adjusted. When baking in a high mountain area, rising time should be shorter, when baking in the lowlands under sea level, rising time should be longer. This machine allows these climate adjustments. Finally I found a breadmaker that can be adjusted to knead, rise, rest and bake bread in the exact right timing.

The machine allows to add extra ingredients automatically at the right time. Good for me, having a wallnut tree. Though I would like to have a larger compartment for the extras.

It also can beep for the right time to add extra ingredients manually, if you like.

At any time you may push the pause button, to add or adjust something, or to safely touch the dough to feel if it has the right consistency. You may want to start the machine after pausing, or just leave it be. After 10 minutes it automatically resumes. It does that also after a current interruption of 7 minutes max.

Using the programming options, you may let the machine make anything that involves warming and stirring. So, no more standing at the stove for me.

The built is cheap but sufficient.

The design of breadpan and kneading hook allows good mixing and kneading of the ingredients, without manual help.

Allowing adjustment of programs makes it the best designed breadmaker I ever used.

What I am missing:

The machine came without a manual and without recipes.

Why? I wonder.

I would like to have a larger extra ingredients compartment, or a filling funnel to fit on top of the compartment. Now I have to choose between nuts and raisings to be automatically added to my bread.

What I dislike about this Russell Hobbs breadmaker:

As soon as I connected the machine to a grounded power supply, the safety of my home power disconnected the power to the machine. Using a non grounded power supply, the machine works well. But I cannot touch the metal outside or inside of this Russell Hobbs breadmaker without getting an electric shock. Probably this is due to a loose or badly connected wire inside the machine.

The "tamper resistant screws" prevent me to repair the machine.

The choise for cheap chines built is not uncommon for many electric appliances, but at least allow to adjust the faulty cheap manufacturing.

By ingrid

30th December 2008

It was the Breadman's custom program feature, which would allow me to make bread using a much longer proving time than usual, that first attracted my interest. The only other machine I'd heard of with that feature was one made by Cuisinart and that wasn't on sale in the UK.

Then Amazon temporarily dropped the Breadman's price from £100 to £50 and I ordered one straight away. I'd previously been told by someone that owned one that his Breadman had developed a fault which caused the bread pan to jump out of its retaining clips during a kneading cycle, so I was slightly concerned when mine arrived to find that the pan was slightly skewed in the machine. I was even more concerned when the pan jumped out of its retaining clips during the very first kneading cycle! I put it back, however, and made sure that it was firmly located, only to have it happen again a few seconds later. When it happened a third time I gave up, transferred the ingredients to my old machine and sent the Breadman back to Amazon for a refund.

Had I not already heard about this fault from the only other Breadman owner I'd ever come across I would probably have thought that my machine was unique in having that particular fault. However, with two out of two known machines exhibiting the same fault it does suggest to me that it's a basic design flaw showing up. When the overall build quality of the Russell Hobbs machine falls short of the build quality of the Biffinett bread machine that I bought in Lidl for just £25 that impression is reinforced. I'm now the proud owner of a Panasonic SD255, which is an excellent machine, and my cheap-as-chips Biffinett bread machine has moved on to infect my daughter with the bread making bug.

By Jon