Comparing Bread Machine Times

This is a comparison between times in Hamilton-Beach Homebaker Breadmaker, model 29882C (my old machine) and new machine, model 29982, just called "2 lb. Bread Maker." Both machines have three levels of crust: light, medium and dark. Choosing any of these does not affect the baking time.

HOMEBAKER BREADMAKER, MODEL #29882C
2 loaf sizes available, 1.5 lb. and 2 lb.
1. Basic 2:53, 3:00
2. French 3:40, 3:50
3. Gluten-Free 3:32, 3:40
4. Quick 1:40 (no choice of size)
5. Sweet 2:50, 2:55
6. 1.5 Express 0:58 (size as indicated)
7. 2.0 Express 0:58 (size as indicated)
8. Dough 1:30 (no choice of size)
9. Jam 1:20 (no choice of size)
0. Cake 2:50 (no choice of size)
11. Whole Grain 2:55. 3:00
12. Bake 1:00 (maximum time)

REPLACEMENT MODEL #29982
3 loaf sizes available, 1 lb., 1.5 lb. and 2 lb.
1. Basic 2:55, 3:00, 3:02
2. French 3:54, 4:01, 4:09
3. Gluten-Free, 2 lb. only, 3:09
4. Quick 1:24 (no choice of size)
5. Sweet 2:47, 2:52, 2:57
6. 1.5 Express 1:25 (size as indicated)
7. 2.0 Express 1:35 (size as indicated)
8. Dough 1:32 (no choice of size)
9. Jam 1:20 (no choice of size)
10. Roast Nut 0:45 (no choice of size)
11. Whole Grain 2:54, 3:09, 3:22
12. Bake 1:00 (maximum time)

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WHOLE GRAIN (WHOLE WHEAT) CYCLE, MODEL #29982

The length of this cycle for a two pound loaf is 3:22. Times are "counting down" in reverse.

3:22 - Starts with this "jerky" sounding movement of the mixing blade.

3:21– Switches to a different mixing noise, still not full-fledged mixing.

3:20 – The mixing blade from now is continuous, additional flour or water may be necessary, sides of the bread pan should be scraped down with a plastic scraper if there is anything there; also flour in the corners should be encouraged with the scraper to come to the middle. 3

3:10 – The full-fledged mixing stops, a ball should be formed by this point. (This machine forms balls of dough better than any other bread maker I have ever used, by the way.)

2:45 – Machine has been quiet until now, there is a beep noise which means "add raisins, nuts or whatever," but the machine does not start up until…

2:43 – Machine resumes mixing, this is unusual, every other machine I have had has you dump the additional ingredients in the bread pan when the blade is moving. From this point, the machine keeps mixing (if there are additional ingredients) or just forming a ball. Sometimes the mixing is non-stop, other times it continues for 29 seconds, then stops for 1 second while the ball is tossed around to another location in the bread pan by the blade. This continues until…

2:10 – Machine finally stops the second mixing (I felt like this is a very long time).

1:50 – The machine moves the bread around slightly for two or three rotations of the blade.

Soon after this point before I figured out how to make the machine make bread successfully, the bread started to rise too much, so I had to abandon following what was going on. The baking would have begun shortly after this.

I got a new bread machine...

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Despite the following rant, the bottom line of which is that this most recent bread machine I got is incapable of making a 2 pound loaf without big issues, I actually found a way to have it make bread successfully ... so read on ... and see the update at the very bottom...

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I finally broke down and got a new Hamilton Beach bread maker. The previous one I had (model 29882C) was falling apart, the pole which holds the blade started dropping out of the bottom of the machine. There were ways to still make bread but this was kind of hairy, because even if the pole was in the machine, there was a small gap where liquids, typically put in the machine first, could leak through the bottom and cause a short circuit or a fire or something.

I had purchased the "Artisan" Hamilton Beach machine, model 29985F, in October 2024 from Amazon.ca to replace 29882C, but 29985F had serious problems (see my review) and it was returned to Amazon. Model 29982 was recommended by the company as the one I should have gotten to replace 29882C. But 29982 was also BAD. Its major problem was it was incapable of making a two pound loaf without a big mess.

You can look up this new model by searching for B0BLXGJ27V at Amazon.ca (Canada) or Amazon.com (USA). (In the URL, Amazon.com says it is a "Programmable Dishwasher.") Amazon.ca currently has it for sale only from Marketplace sellers, the price is over $200 Canadian. Amazon.com has it as "Amazon's choice" for $74.99 US on special, but to order this from Canada costs around $143 Canadian including shipping; I ordered mine from Walmart Canada and the cost was around $145 Canadian.

I made several tests with 29982.

The first one was a 2 pound whole wheat bread using an old recipe from a Black & Decker manual/recipe book which I have used many times without a problem. (NOTE: Instead of water and powdered milk, I used 3% milk from Safeway; instead of honey I used maple syrup, which I use interchangeably with honey all the time.) The bread hit the viewing window of the machine during the baking cycle, but it only touched it a little bit (about the size of a quarter) and I tapped it down gently with a spoon, it turned out OK and was tasty. I was optimistic.

The second test, a white bread, was using the 2 pound loaf recipe in the manual for the new machine, 29982. The bread hit the viewing window big time and I punched it down, but the top of the bread looked bad; the rest of the loaf was OK. The ingredients were exactly as listed; I was using Robin Hood white flour.

The third test was this "kitchen sink" bread which I have made many times with my old HB machine and never had a problem. (See recipe here.) It uses many different kinds of seeds, flour and so forth. The machine started to sound very weird during the second mixing cycle; I hadn't monitored it during the previous tests. I thought it was broken, but later I found out this was not true. Freaking out, I stopped the machine and took the dough out and put it in a baking pan and baked the bread in my stove's oven. It turned out OK. I think during the baking cycle, it would have hit the top of the machine. Let's ignore this test.

The fourth test was another two pound loaf of the whole wheat bread mentioned above, again using the old recipe from the Black & Decker manual. It started to almost hit the viewing window of the bread machine with a huge bulge and over an hour still to go and if I hadn't stopped things, the mess would have been much worse. The ingredients were exactly as specified, with milk powder and honey this time. I took the dough out of the machine, and put it in a bread pan and cooked it in the oven.

The next test was a one-pound loaf, using the new machine's white bread recipe from the manual. One pound loaf recipes are often found in really old bread machine books, though they are usually not identified as such. This turned out perfectly. How could it be otherwise, it was the smallest one -- unlike the two pound loaf above with the same recipe which was a disaster. This test used white flour which was not Robin Hood flour.

The final test (so far) was the 1½ pound loaf from the default white bread recipe again. This one also hit the roof, though not as serious as other examples, with about 32 minutes to go during the final baking sequence. The rest of the bread looked OK. This test used white flour which again was not Robin Hood flour.

It doesn't make sense to me that I have used the whole wheat bread recipe from the old Black & Decker book for years and the loaves all turned out OK, but now the results are inconsistent. I think I was lucky that my old Hamilton Beach machines were compatible with those recipes.

BUT ... there are some other issues, maybe. I notice that the ingredients for Robin Hood flour (a Canadian flour which is more expensive than typical "no name" flour) that I used to make a 2 lb default white loaf (above) from the HB manual (which was a flop) are kind of weird. There might even be other grains included in this white flour along with other additives. And when I used to make bread with an HB machine, I usually first heated up the water for 30 seconds in my microwave ... but I think the rising/baking would override that ... it's not like "cold" water at the beginning could have such a huge effect on the loaves. And it's not like I live in La Paz, Bolivia, I am only a few hundred feet above sea level.

Here are some other interesting facts about this new Hamilton Beach machine, 29982:

• First of all, there are only TWO recipes in the manual. One is for white bread (which I have used twice above, one was a huge flop). The second is for something using the "Roast Nut" cycle which replaces the "Cake" cycle in my previous HB machine. You are supposed to take some nuts like almonds, soak them in salty water, drain them and then cook them in the machine for 45 minutes, producing a snack treat. If you want other bread recipes, you have to go the Hamilton-Beach web site! There are around 40 such recipes on the page at the Hamilton Beach site (choose "Breads" on the left side), but if you don't own a computer you are stuck with only the recipe for white bread, unless you own some recipe books or consult the Internet. Some of these recipes at the HB web site are for the same bread, so you get two recipes, one each for 1½ and 2 pound loaves.
• The mixing blade in the new machine is not compatible with the shaft in my now-broken machine's baking pan ... this could be a problem if you are ordering some replacement blade from a place like Amazon where lots of generic blades are available, which don't specify which machine they are for.
• The overall dimensions of the bread pan are similar to my earlier machine, but the thing on the bottom of the pan where it connects to the motor is NOT the same, so you cannot use the pan in an old machine or vice versa. This again could cause issues if you are ordering a generic bread pan from Amazon which does not specify which machine it is for.
• The machine beeps at various times (when you add raisins, nuts, etc.) but the volume of the beeps varies. The beeps when everything is finished are barely audible. As well, when I was making whole wheat bread, it started beeping at 1:35 of the cycle, which made no sense, because there was nothing happening at that point.

See also another posting on my blog which compares the times for various breads on the old and new Hamilton Beach machines as well as a sample time breakdown for one cycle on the new machine. The old machine's manual had a time chart which was much more detailed than the one for the recent machine, which is disappointing.

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UPDATE, JANUARY 12, 2025

I was just about ready to return this new Hamilton Beach machine to Walmart, when I suddenly had a brainstorm.

This new HB machine is unusual, because it has 3 different weight settings: 1 lb., 1½ lb. and 2 lb. One pound loaves were popular when bread machines were first introduced many years ago; these days typical weights are 1½ lb., 2 lb., and even 3 lb.

Since a 1 lb. loaf of white bread using the one and only default recipe in the machine's manual turned out OK (because it was the smallest one with the shortest baking cycle) I decided to try and make a 1½ lb. loaf without any change in the ingredients, but using the 1 lb. baking cycle. The results were perfect, not only for a white bread loaf (which had blown up using the 1½ lb. recipe with 1½ lb baking cycle as well as a 2 lb. loaf which was a huge disaster), but also for my "kitchen sink" bread which is full of seeds, plus a pumpernickel loaf.

In my old Black & Decker manual/recipe book, I found there are several 1½ lb recipes, and I found a really old bread machine cookbook written by Donna Rathmell German (from 1991) which has recipes for all 3 weights. She wrote several bread machine books judging by what is available at Amazon. I used this book for the pumpernickel bread using the 1½ lb. recipe/1 lb. baking cycle combo as well as another recipe for 1½ lb. cinnamon raisin bread from the Black & Decker book, and they all turned out fine.

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My conversation with Rufus, Amazon AI

(I was looking at some soundtrack CD on amazon.com, suddenly there was this pop up on the screen:)

Hi, I'm Rufus!

You can ask me all your shopping questions. My answers are powered by AI, so I may not always get things right. Learn more.

Does it contain any dialog or narration?

(This was not a question which I was asking.)

Unfortunately, the product information does not specify whether the soundtrack contains any dialog or narration. Soundtrack albums can include a variety of audio content beyond just musical scores. Without further details from the product description or customer reviews, I can't provide a definitive answer.

(I should have looked a little closer to see this was gonna be a conversation with AI, which was introduced on Amazon in February 2024, almost a year ago.)

Where is this pop up coming from?

I'm afraid I don't have enough context to determine what pop-up you're referring to. Could you please provide some more details about the situation?

I mean this pop up where you are telling me stuff RIGHT NOW.

I do not actually see any pop-up appearing on my end. As an AI technology without a visual interface, I can only respond based on the conversational prompts you provide. Could you please describe the pop-up you're referring to in more detail? I'd be happy to try my best to address any concerns once I understand the situation better.

(All this shit with pictures, stuff I might want to buy, suddenly appears:)

IrriFix Box Set - Rain Bird Popup Riser Extensions 1800EXT | RainBird Universal Sprinkler Extenders 1800-EXT | Set of 6 with Instruction Card & RotorTool Screwdriver

F FORITO 2-Pack Anti Blue Light Screen Protector Compatible with MacBook Air 15.3-inch 2024 2023 Release M3 A3114 M2 A2941 - Eye Protection Blue Light Blocking & Anti Glare Screen Filter

Ailun Privacy Screen Protector for iPhone 14 / iPhone 13 / iPhone 13 Pro [6.1 Inch] 2 Pack Anti Spy Private Tempered Glass Anti-Scratch Case Friendly [Not for iPhone 13 Pro Max] [2 Pack]

Gogoonike Adjustable Laptop Stand for Desk, Metal Foldable Laptop Riser, Portable Laptop Holder Mount, Ventilated Cooling Computer Notebook Stand Compatible with 10-15.6” Laptops

MNN Portable Monitor 15.6inch FHD 1080P USB C HDMI Gaming Ultra-Slim IPS Display w/Smart Cover & Speakers,HDR Plug&Play, External Monitor for Laptop PC Phone Mac

(Back to the discussion with "Rufus"...)

Stupid, everything you are telling me is in a pop up which seems to be connected with some item I am looking at on amazon.com.

I don't have an answer for that. Do you want to try another shopping question? You can also head over to the Customer Service Home page for more information.

The customer service home page for what?

The customer service home page provides assistance with orders, subscriptions, refunds, returns, missing packages, tracking deliveries, identifying unknown charges, and other common help topics related to Amazon's services and products.

To get help, select Customer Service.

Stupid, what is this "customer service home page" connected with, is this Amazon or some seller on Amazon?

The customer service home page refers to Amazon's official support resources. It provides assistance for Amazon's own services like orders, deliveries, payments, refunds and other common issues customers may face while shopping on Amazon. The page allows you to select the topic you need help with and guides you through resolving your query or concern.

To get help, select Customer Service.

(That is enough.)

According to one WWW page, the name "Rufus" is associated with black people:

The Decennial U.S. Census data also provides insights into the ethnic identity associated with the Rufus surname. From 2000 to 2010, there were shifts in the percentages across different ethnicities. The largest ethnic group identifying with the Rufus surname is Black, which increased from 73.52% in 2000 to 76.10% in 2010. The second largest ethnicity, White, decreased from 19.29% to 14.52% during the same period.

If you watch Hawaii Five-O, you would know that this name, at least at the time of the show, was stereotypically connected with black people: http://fiveohomepage.com/season11/distantthunder.htm.

Facebook annoyances (again)

I was a member of a Facebook group which focuses on bread machines. A while ago, I got kicked out of the group. I couldn't access it or the administrator from any level. Any connection I had with this group totally disappeared. And I was one of the "Top Contributors" to this group!

I managed to contact the admin, and he said I had been kicked out because I made a posting which contained the word "money" (seriously) so Facebook must have thought I was a spammer. What a joke. Anyway, the admin reinstated me and I posted more for a few more weeks.

But then there were more problems. I posted a message about this particular bread machine, that a new model had been released, and once I did this, I was again kicked out of the group and any connection with it disappeared, just like before. No idea what happened, there was no mention of money in this posting.

However, I think possibly Facebook has it in for me because elsewhere in my Facebook feed, I had posted a couple of links to news and opinion articles about what jerks they are. I had left Facebook after my initial fascination with the place several years ago, and took great pains when I went back on recently to not use any of the information connected with my previous account, though I'm sure they can make the connection.

Perhaps there is another issue, though. Recently Facebook is having a fight with the Canadian government, and they are cutting off all reference to news from Canadian newspapers because the government wants them to compensate the places where they "steal" this news from. Maybe I, being Canadian, am tarnished with this brush, though my recent posting responsible for my banishment was hardly a "news" item in the sense of current events.

I managed again to get in touch with the administrator from the group to investigate my second "disappearance," but I am not encouraged to resume my postings in this group even if I will be allowed back.

Facebook seems to be a horribly paranoid place. I have asked people to contact me via my e-mail outside of Facebook (I have only been on the internet since 1991 and had my own WWW site since 1997) but it is unusual they will do this.

Recently I wanted to send someone a PDF file of this school newspaper that she was involved with many years ago with via the Facebook Messenger. She gave me the usual paranoia, i.e., "I don't feel comfortable when clicking on things in Messenger." But she finally DID reply to me -- not to my e-mail but in Messenger -- and botched up her reply in a spectacular way, ending up in some other message in my Facebook feed which revealed everything she wished to tell me confidentially in a very public way!

If this kind of nonsense persists, I think I am going to abandon Facebook again soon. Every second posting there seems like a commercial, much like the Internet itself these days. Why I am hanging out on Facebook -- mostly in groups which reflect my interests, i.e., film and other music, film technology, my home town, and so forth -- doesn't make sense, since I cut off cut cable TV over 20 years ago because I hated the commercials there so much. The last time I got off Facebook I got fed up with their insidous monetizing everything you are connected with as well as their crappy attitudes reinforcing bourgeois morality (no pictures of nudity, even of famous statues, or breastfeeding women, the picture of the little girl who was bombed with napalm in the Vietnam war and so forth).

Stupid Amazon survey

I was selected to take a survey connected with Amazon. I think this was Amazon.com based on some of the response questions.

Normally I can't stand surveys which has input ranging from bad to good like this:

○ I hate it ○ I sort of hate it ○ I have no opinion ○ I sort of like it ○ I love it.

Seriously, people don't think like this! But I figured, what the heck...

This was one of the first screens, which led to this, a more detailed explanation.

The only one of these tools on Amazon I use with my cell phone is the barcode scanner, which will tell you if the item is available at Amazon ... sometimes. My experience is it doesn't work most of the time, though if you type the actual number under the bar code into the Amazon search engine, it will find the item (if it's in the system) right away.

Of course, when you complain about something in one of these surveys, you get sent off on a tangent with specific questions about what you are complaining about. For example, this screen, this one, and this one.

All of this ended up here. The issue here is not whether I want to use the barcode scanner again or not, but the fact that it doesn't work correctly most of the time, and there is no place to leave specific information about what I find wrong with it aside from a couple of generic text entry boxes in other areas of the survey which I doubt anyone will ever read.

Many of the responses in this survey ranged from annoying to idiotic, like "How often have you had difficulties finding products on Amazon that represent you?" (WHAT?!?!?)

Who comes up with this crap? Do normal people really think about their Amazon experience this way? I finally just chose the most negative response to each question, trying to get to the end of the survey.

I have to wonder if this survey was prepared in some country where English is not the first language after reading "Amazon acknowledges, and correctly interpets your asks."

It ended with ("for statistical purposes only") "Are you of Hispanic or Latino/a descent?" followed by this! Can you believe it? I filled in the blank with "CANADIAN."

Hassles of Everyday Life

If you do a Google search for my cell phone number you will get a few results -- creepy web sites in countries like Turkey, Russia, etc. which compile various phone numbers. If you try and go to these web pages you will get stern warnings from your browser, "don't do this," because they are extremely unsafe.

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Because I have an Android cell phone, the other day I got some message from Google maps which told me all these places I have been recently over a period of several days. For example, the museum in the town where I grew up near Vancouver (I donated a bunch of stuff to them), two Value Village stores, and a restaurant where I had brunch with this old friend of mine. Because I have "location" on with the phone, it knew all these things. If I don't have location on and I lose my phone, it cannot find it.

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I got warnings in both text message and email yesterday that I hadn't paid one of my credit card bills and the amount is due on March 30, hardly enough time to pay it off, because banks don't seem to work on the weekends as far as receiving payments are concerned. The only problem is, I already paid the bill when I got the statement 10 days before and in my account at the bank which issued the card it shows that the payment was received shortly after this.

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Yesterday I got a text from some person in Ohio which looked like it was a wrong number. I said to them, who are you, the person then started to get chatty when I said I was in Vancouver, saying "Oh Canada is a wonderful country, blah blah blah." They sort of apologized for bothering me, but then seemed to be starting a conversation with "what should I call you?" At this point, I blocked the number. I felt like saying, "Oh, I guess you are one of those Internet prostitutes," but they did seem sincere, obviously part of their persona to insinuate their way into my good books. I should have replied, "I am Officer Mike with the Vancouver City Police."

Another example of why Facebook is dumb

On January 17th, 2023, I posted the following on Facebook. It said "Shared with Public," this means "anyone on or off Facebook" can see this posting. Probably not a good idea considering what happened. I only have about 5 dozen friends on FB, these people that I have known in the past, have worked with, etc. I thought only these people would see my posting, which was like this:

"I received e-mail from one of my investment companies that my statement is ready. I don't recall ever receiving something from these people before (this was not a scam). I tried to track down the password, but there was nothing. So I tried the usual "forgot your password" link. When I did this, it says what is your e-mail address, so I entered the address that this document was sent to. Just below this, it asks for your "login name." Now, if I can't remember the password or where it is, why would I know where my "user name" is? DUH!!"

I actually resolved this problem myself. But shortly after posting this, I received a message from some attractive looking woman in SYRIA (seriously, no pun intended for "syria-sly") with advice on contacting a guy called bunyan_assist on Instagram. (Facebook owns Instagram.)

The bunyan_assist person supposedly can help people if you are having trouble connecting to accounts because of login/password issues. But I wondered, how is this relevant to me, because I didn't provide a lot of details about the problem I was having including specific information about the web site I was having the problem with.

In addition to this Instagram account name, a phone number which was in Wisconsin was provided. This Syrian woman had several hundred friends, making me think that her account was hacked. The whole thing was creepy, I just deleted her message.

However, I wanted to post about this experience later. It took a while to find a reference to this bunyan_assist in my Google search history from a couple of weeks prior. When you do the subsequent Google search for this "fixer," the resulting information which you can see on the search results page is very sketchy:

(#1) More I messaged @BUNYAN_ASSIST on Instagram, his a cyber security expert who helped me recovered my account successfully, kindly message or text him on +1...

(#2) But I know you can still get back into your account by direct message (Bunyan_assist) on Instagram now and ask for his help to recover your account text or..

(This what you see when you get the search results, if you go to the place where these results are supposedly located, the above information is not seen.)

So I posted about my experience on FB with much of the same info as above (again, not just to my friends), and almost immediately got multiple responses similar to what I had received before. This was all very weird. Is some scammer scraping every account on Facebook with keywords like "password," "login," "problem(s)," etc.? The whole thing was creepy, I just deleted all of it (again). These are the second batch of responses I got over this issue...

5 comments

Kelly Andrews -- Kindly inbox me immediately for assistance

Brenda Tullock -- I forgot my Facebook password too but got help from meta_generat_cyber on instagram he helped recover my account he can recover your account...

Brenda Tullock -- Just try and message him on Instagram now I'm sure he can help

Evelyn Smith -- You just invoked more of them lol (this woman wanted to become my friend on FB, I declined her request)

Mhiz Golden -- You can get your account back contact mirac Recovery on Instagram