February 23, 2009 - 3:36pm
Breadman tr875 or tr2500BC ??
My mother is looking for a bread machine and has decided she wants one of these two machines, but we can't figure out which one would be the best choice. Can anyone give me some insight? She's interested in mostly making simple breads, bagels, rolls, etc. Thank you!
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Found this essay on eBay groups which is an excellent summary of the choices when selecting a bread machine.
Basically when it comes to bread machines there is Zojirishu, and there is everything else. The Zos are all well-engineered, heavy-duty, have spare parts available (including paddles and buckets), and can actually be repaired at service centers.
All other bread machines are built to the lowest cost possible, don't have repair parts, and are intended to be throwaway. Which is not to say they are bad values: over 10 years we burned up one Regal and one Breadman, but we got good value from both of them. Three years ago we bought a Zo knowing how we would use it, and it too has been a good value. But it costs 3x-4x what a Breadman costs.
The tr875 is a single-paddle vertical machine, with the strengths and weaknesses of that design. If the goal is to make small quantities of dough for bakeout it will probably be fine. It gets good reviews on-line and seems to have a fairly low dead-on-arrival and early-failure percentage by the standards of the low-price breadmaker world.
The tr2500 is a single-paddle semi-horizontal machine. To my mind the horizontal loaf bakes out better and provides more usable bread even in a one-paddle system. It gets good reviews from those whose units work out of the box, but seems to have a pretty high dead-on-arrival percentage. Which is not uncommon in my experience; I think we returned two of the Regals to Kohl's before we got the one that worked. Just be prepared for that process.
sPh