Had mine for three days and three lots of bread with three fails. If the bread had turned out any heavier or harder I could have built a house from them. So a refund allowed me to get a good one and success first time. As an entry level bread machine I would never recommend it

One in five times this machine gets things right. The other four times are random flops. Overflowing. Undercooking. Failure to rise. Brick like. You can't trust this thing to make any recipe consistently. Easier and cheaper to buy bread from Coles/Woolies. At least that is reliable. It's on a shelf in the garage now. Probably forever.

Pros:

Cheap

Cons:

Can't be relied upon.

have just used my Sunbeam Smart Bakehouse BM4500 for the first time. Raisin Bread loaf dough cycle double the amount of dough with this machine compared to my 12 year old Sunbeam Quantum Smartbake. I prefer to bake the conventional way in the oven gives me double the volume and a lovely baked loaf overall. Knowledge of bread making and how yeast works helps for successful bread making. A little more effort but worth it. This machine is so easy to use and clean afterwards. The stainless steel square look is a beautiful edtion to the kitchen bench. thanks Sunbeam for such a lovely machine.

Have tried and tried with this bread maker but finally giving up. I even had my parents bring over some of the great "surebake" yeast from NZ. Back home we had a Panasonic that always worked. This Sunbeam just has failing loaves time after time. You follow all the instructions perfectly with fresh ingredients but sure enough - a sunken dense mass of failure is all you get.

I had the same issues as a lot of people with bread not baking correctly not rising the only good thing i made was dough in the first month i tried everything different yeasts etc then i changed to a bakers flour and bingo bread is beautiful. Don't get me wrong every now and then i get one that sinks a little but still nice to eat. I hope this helps anyone that's having issues :-)

we agree with the large number of complaints. bread sunken, undercooked , have tried all of the hints sunbeam, have posted still terrible bread. machine has been returned twice to sunbeam, still have to buy bread from super market -- bakehouse is a flop. we have never baked a good loaf using same laucke mixture as we have used in other bread makers

We always had a Breville Bakehouse but after several years it played up so we "saved" some money and ordered the Sunbeam. BIG mistake, not one loaf came out as we wanted, even when we used our own recipes, and the noise!!!!! Bought another Breville bakehouse and the Sunbeam sits in storage, with no one even looking at it when we had a garage sale.

I have a BM4500 and when i dig the blade out of the bread it leaves a hole and when i slice my bread my slice breakes almost in two. i cant make a sandwich out of it .. the bread looks good at a glance.. but the bread crumbles even when i toast it. so so disappointed

Piece of rubbish. 9 out of 10 loaves do not rise despite me being very careful with ingredients. I have even tried it with the guy from the local bread mix shop who is a qualified baker.

If you do buy it, do so at your own risk.

Don't say you haven't been warned.

My parents bought this Sunbeam Bakehouse. We attempted 3 loaves and all 3 were inedible. The dough starts off looking normal but the machine over kneads and destroys the gluten elasticity which turns the dough into a thickened cream consistency. It rises slightly but then collapses on baking and turns out like a brick. We tried bread mix and a recipe from scratch from the Sunbeam manual. We took it back and paid a bit extra for the Panasonic. I have owned a Panasonic for 15 years which is still making great bread.

We've had the bread machine for a few months now and all was going well until it stopped heating and the bread was not cooking properly and not raising.
There is nothing in the troubleshooting to help remedy the problem, you'll only find fixes for your recipes. No help at all in mixing the problem

Have only used this bread maker three times (purchased 6 weeks ago) as each loaf has been somewhat disappointing - not risen enough and sides over brown top sank as cooled. Have taught in food area for fourty years and believe it does not heat enough to activate yeast well enough. Machine barely got warm so a bit of a laugh beware not to get burnt when handling.
Will now persevere daily for a week using only ordinary white flour rather than mix etc and see what eventuates It will be returned if no better succ
ess

Really easy to use settings. A set and leave appliance. We had some issues initially with the bread sinking but this was easily rectified by using bread improver. The bread now looks, feels and tastes like bakery bread. Crunchy outer and soft and light inner. Our favourite is the pizza dough. Leaves the pizzas shop to shame.
The recipes in the back of the manuals are great and spot on with their measurements.
The only con is that the mixing paddle does leave an average size whole in the bottom of the bread. Not an issue of you tend not to eat the crust end of the loaf.

I expect much more from a big company, this product does leave a big hole in the bottom of your bread, and instruction is very plain and simple so you end up with sunken bread.
We use all fresh ingredients; our yeast was active too but still ended up with sunken bread.
The bread maker in my opinion is not worth your money or trouble. Honestly just neat, you bread on the bench and use an oven.
Much faster, less washing up,
“Perfect bread every time”

We have had a sunbeam bake house that was 25 years old and the kneading blade had always left us with a big hole in the bottom of the bread, Sunbeam has bought out an improved version, in that the kneading blade now collapses after the kneading process, I was absolutely amazed, now there is only a slight indent when bread has finished baking. Well done Sunbeam. We are very happy.