Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Bread Maker

Should You Buy A Zojirushi Bread Maker

Zojirushi has a wonderful array of bread makers that can satisfy the needs of anyone. The Home Bakery 1-pound mini bread maker is perfect for single people, couples, or small families. If you have the money, you can buy the more expensive Maestro machine, which comes with more features and better performance, and is also perfect for single people or small families. The BB-CEC20 and the Virtuoso machines are great for large families since these are both 2-pound loaf makers.

So, should you buy a Zojirushi bread maker? Yes, you absolutely should, particularly if you like the Zojirushi brand. to buy any of the bread makers mentioned on this page at the best prices.

Zojirushi Supreme Vs Virtuoso: The Differences

As you can see, both machines are very similar and share a lot of the same characteristics. One thing to keep in mind is that the Virtuoso Plus is the newer machine of the two, so there are bound to be a few differences.

The Virtuoso Plus was released in 2016, while Supreme has been on the market for a few decades now.

Other Settings And Features

• Automatic 2-lb. breadmaker bakes a large traditional rectangular shaped loaf, using ingredients you select
• Convenient 12-hour clock with 13-hour delay timer makes it easy to set the delay timer for fresh bread when you want it
• European course setting bakes light and savory breads that pair well with a variety of cuisines
• Rapid courses allow you to bake a loaf of White or Whole Wheat Bread in just 2 hrs. and 25 mins.
• Crust Control lets you choose from three available crust colors: Light, Medium, or Dark
• Recessed handles on the bottom of the breadmaker allow for easier transportation and storage
• Accessories include a Liquid Measuring Cup, Nested Measuring Cups and a Measuring Spoon

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Testing The Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme Breadmaker

Trust me when I say that its seriously fun to test out a breadmaker, especially when that breadmaker is the Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme. My issue with my own breadmaker has always been the fact that its a 1-lb loaf, and you need to cut the loaf into huge pieces and then cut them in half again to actually eat them.

With the Zojirushi Breadmaker you dont have to do that. You can pop out your loaf, cut it up into traditional sandwich-sized pieces, and enjoy your loaf just like you would with a loaf youd buy in the store.

Making Rapid Raisin Bread

The Zojirushi Virtuoso Plus has a rapid setting that cuts a full hour off its cook time, and I decided to try it out using the recipe for rapid raisin bread. The ingredients were pretty much the same as they were for regular loaves, and included water, bread flour, sugar, dry milk, salt, butter, and rapid rise yeast, as well as the addition of cinnamon. Once I started the program, the machine rested for a shorter period before it started kneading, and it beeped for me to add the raisins after a half hour. When I opened the lid, it simply stopped mixing, and when I shut the lid again, it resumed what it was doing.

With the light crust setting, this loaf was cooked in a little over two hourspretty impressive, if I do say so myself. It was slightly more dense than other loaves and had a more doughy texture, but the flavor was absolutely delicious. Taste-wise, it was my favorite recipe thus far. However, I will say that a lot of the raisins settled to the bottom of the loaf, leaving the top somewhat sparse.

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Where To Buy The Zojirushi Bb

Zojirushi may not be a household name, but they have a large line of home appliances and devices with great feedback from their growing customer base.

Thanks to this companys rising popularity, getting their items into your home wont be too hard. The Zojirushi BB-PFC20BA Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus is available both in-store and online.

While its usually best to check home department and appliance stores, you can kick-start your search with the following online retailers.

Design: Its A Big One

Make no mistakemeasuring 10.5 x 18 x 12.88 inches and weighing 24 pounds, this is a large bread machine. That said, the machine necessitates its size in order to accommodate long rectangular loaves. The baking pan has two paddles for efficient kneading, and we have to admit that its almost hypnotizing to peek through the top window and watch the dough move from paddle to paddle. Once in a while, we ended up with a baked loaf that was higher on one side than the other, but we were amazed at how many loaves were perfectly even across the top.

The bread pan is extremely sturdy, made from metal thats heavier than the bread pans we use in our oven. Two large, looped, heavy-duty handles make the pans easy to remove from the machine and push back back in place after washing.

The bread machine stops its kneading process when you lift the lid, so you can nudge the dough or touch it to judge the texture without worrying about the paddles spinning. However, aside from the pound cake recipewhich suggested scraping down the sides partway through the mixing processthere should be little need to lift the lid unless additional ingredients need to be added.

Along with being large, this machine is also rather heavy. If you make bread often, this may live on your counter. But if you only use it occasionally, you may get tired of moving it in and out of storage.

The Spruce Eats / Donna Currie

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Making Whole Wheat Walnut Bread

I usually try to make a whole wheat loaf fairly early in the testing process, but with the Zojirushi, it ended up being the last recipe I made. Why? All the whole wheat recipes in the booklet included vital wheat gluten, which was a tricky ingredient to track down. I checked several local stores with no luck, and finally, I just ordered some from Amazon. I had never heard of the ingredient before, but apparently, it helps whole wheat loaves rise and gives them a better texture.

Besides vital wheat gluten, the whole wheat walnut bread recipe called for water, honey, whole wheat flour, sugar, dry milk, salt, butter, and rapid yeast. Interestingly, youre not able to select a crust color for this program. The machine prompted me to add in the walnuts after about an hour, and the whole cycle took 3 hours and 20 minutes to bake.

The bread had a light texture , and the flavor was just what Id expect from a whole wheat bread. The walnuts were also nicely distributed throughout the loaf, likely because I chopped them into fairly small pieces before adding them in. I was skeptical that the vital wheat gluten was necessary to the loaf, as Ive made wheat bread without it before, but it really did improve the overall texture.

Using The Basic Bread Function

I started testing the Zojirushi breadmaker by making a traditional loaf of bread with the basic bread function. If youve never baked bread with a breadmaker before youll be able to see detailed instructions in the included booklet. Youll find recipes for everything from basic white bread to cake.

I added the ingredients to the baking pan and closed the lid. The breadmaker spent a few minutes heating up, so if you want to speed up the process a bit you can hit the start button while youre adding the ingredients.

Once the breadmaker is warm, it starts to knead the dough. The dual mixing blades really get to work tossing the dough around. This was the loudest part of the breadmaking process, but its really not that loud at all. I would liken the sound to my food processor on low, and it only mixes for a bit before your bread begins its first rise.

With the basic bread function, your dough gets to rest and rise, which is the traditional way of making bread. With the Quick bread function the dough doesnt get that much time to rest and rise, and you may need to use quick-rise yeast in order to get the same result.

I checked on my loaf periodically, but one of the best parts of having a breadmaker make your bread is that you can just put it all inside the machine and forget about it until the smell of freshly baked bread fills your home. I make bread by hand all the time, and this was definitely a much easier process.

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What Can Zojirushi Home Bakery Bb

With this bread maker, you can make your own special course with the help of the Homemade course. Theres a recipe book with useful recipes to get you started, including Cinnamon Roll bread, Meatloaf miracle, gluten-free dinner bread, mini white bread, homemade pasta, and more. You can adjust the rise, knead, and bake times using 3 easy to set homemade memory controls.

The bread maker makes a 2lb large capacity loaf for a large family. This loaf has a traditional rectangular shape. Making your perfect loaf is easy and a matter of adding the ingredients and pressing a few buttons. Thanks to its 13-hour delay timer, you can command the machine to start baking your bread at the time of your choosing.

If you want to wake up to a freshly baked loaf, this feature can help you enjoy this convenience. Moreover, this machine includes even European course settings that enable it to bake savory and light slices of bread, which matches well with a wide range of cuisines.

The rapid courses let you make your favorite loaf of whole wheat or white bread in only 2 hours and 25 minutes. You can have your bread in dark, medium, or light crust thanks to the convenient crust color control that lets you choose the shade according to your preference. This machine offers a wide variety of pre-set menu options including multigrain, gluten-free, sugar-free, vegan, salt-free, whole wheat, and rapid whole wheat.

Performance: It Does Everything Well

This is an impressive bread machine. We started our testing with a basic recipe from the included cookbook and it came out exactly as expected. From there, we moved on to whole wheat bread using the wheat setting, and an herb bread using the European setting. Each of those emerged perfectly, with a nicely rounded top. We made jam and pizza dough, and were more than happy with the results. We attempted the pound cake recipe, but it came out a little dry.

The Zojirushi has a suggested order for adding ingredients, with water and other liquids added first and yeast added last. After making so many successful loaves of bread following those instructions, we decided to test what would happen if we added yeast the same time as water. We still got an acceptable loaf of bread, which gave us confidence to try even more interesting recipe variations.

We started our testing with a basic recipe from the included cookbook and it came out exactly as expected.

After a lot of baking, the only bread that wasnt great was a gluten-free loaf that had a concave top. Gluten-free bread can be finicky even when its baked in the oven, though, so we werent too concerned about flaws in appearance. With some tweaking and testing, were sure we could perfect that one that as well.

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Should You Buy The Zojirushi Bb

If you plan to make bread on a regular basis, the Zojirushi BB-PDC20BA Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker is a worthwhile splurge. Its bread recipes have a better texture and more evenly browned crust than other bread makers Ive tested, and its an added bonus that the loaves are a traditional horizontal shapeideal for toasting. Plus, it offers several settings that other machines lack, including salt-, sugar-, and gluten-free options. Just bear in mind that some of these recipes require unconventional ingredients that may be tricky to find.

The only real downside of this breadmaker is that it only makes 2-pound loaves, but considering how delicious the final product is, I dont think youll have any trouble eating the larger loaves of breadmy family sure didnt!

How To Add Fruit And Nuts

The Zojirushi BB-PAC20 does not have an automatic dispenser, which is unfortunate. What it does have is an audible signal alert for adding raisins and nuts. It beeps about 5 minutes before the end of the kneading step for a duration of 30 seconds. The display shows the word âADDâ. Open the lid and add the fruit, nuts or raisins to the dough. Avoid adding large or hard ingredients. Chop the fruit and nuts into small pieces, so it does not obstruct the kneading blades.

Most owners do not miss the automatic dispenser, except for those owners who like to bake raisin or nut bread overnight with the delay timer. If you are used to baking raisin bread with the delay timer for breakfast, then you might consider buying a bread machine that has an automatic fruit and nut dispenser. You may read our review of bread machines with an automatic dispenser and make your choice from among them.

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Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker Review

In this Zojirushi BB-PDC20BA Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker review we made sweet, savory, and speedy loaves to put it through its paces

The Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus is worth the splurge for bread-lovers

• Some recipes use unconventional ingredients

• –

If youre serious about bread making, chances are you want a serious appliance like the Zojirushi BB-PDC20BA Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker. While more expensive than many other bread machines available today, this unit makes it truly effortless to bake delicious homemade loaves of breadall you have to do is measure out the ingredients and let the appliance go to work.

The Zojirushi Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker justifies its high price in several ways. First, it boasts 15 different settings, including options for gluten-free, salt-free, sugar-free, and vegan bread. It can even help you make sourdough starter, and there are three homemade memory settings that you can program to bake custom loaves. Additionally, this bread maker boasts dual kneading blades that promise more even mixing, and a horizontal baking pan for a classic loaf shape.

What Makes The Bread Machine Stand Out

There are 14 different courses to choose from, like gluten-free and sugar-free bread, and even other baked goods like cake. You can also create your own custom course, for which there are several recipes in the accompanying book. For instance, with the dough course, you can make doughnuts, butter rolls, breadsticks, bagels, and more.

Following the recipe book, I made basic white, rapid white, Italian herb, honey, chocolate, and light sourdough breads, as well as pizza dough and pound cake. The flavors for each were relatively subtle, but they all tasted great.

No matter what recipe I use, once the bread enters the baking stage, the scent will set off a frenzy in my house.

“Is the bread done yet?” “When will the bread be done?” My wife and two sons can’t wait to get a slice of the latest loaf. Typically, I’ll let it cool on a rack for an hour after it’s done so that it slices easier. But they can’t wait that long, so when I go to slice the bread, I’ll often find that someone has absconded with an end piece.

As a pizza aficionado, I usually make my own dough by hand with recipes that require a day or two for long fermentation. Still, sometimes, I just don’t have the time. When that happens, the pizza dough made by the Virtuoso Plus is a passable substitute for my fancy fermentations.

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Home Bakery Virtuoso Vs Virtuoso Plus

These Zojirushi bread machines are almost exactly the same when it comes to appearance and features. The BB-PDC20 is a newer version of the BB-PAC20.

The biggest differences are the larger LCD and expanded course list of the BB-PDC20: it has 15 options compared to the 10 courses of the BB-PAC20. Another small difference is the control panel buttons that has white text on a black background.

It seems like the BB-PAC20 is not listed with the other bread makers on the Zojirushi website. Anyway, I added my review of the BB-PAC20 Home Bakery Virtuoso to the bottom of this post.

The Zojirushi BB-PDC20 Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus is obviously going to cost a little more than the older Zojirushi dual blade bread machines, even though those models might still be available .

Should You Choose The Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme Breadmaker

Out of all the breadmakers Ive used, I have to say I like this one the best. Ive made bread on my own in everything from a loaf pan to a Pullman pan for square loaves, and using this breadmaker is just so much easier than making it on your own.

It really makes a difference when you can make a traditional 2-lb loaf of bread, and I think Id use a breadmaker more often if it was always this easy to make bread you can quickly use for sandwiches.

The loaves I made with this breadmaker were amazing. With no real learning curve and a great instruction booklet, I think the Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme is a great choice for anyone who wants to bake bread at home. You can find the Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme Breadmaker on Best Buy right now.

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