The Hamilton Beach 29885 is an affordable bread machine with a single kneading paddle and a nonstick bread pan. It offers 14 preprogrammed menu options for making bread, preparing dough, baking cake or cooking jam. Its most interesting program might be the Artisan Dough option, which kneads and rises the dough for about five hours.
Hamilton Beach 29885 Bread Maker: Overview
The Hamilton Beach 29885 is an inexpensive bread machine, so there is nothing special or flashy about its control panel. It offers the usual LCD and buttons for choosing a menu program, selecting a loaf size, choosing a crust color, setting the delay timer and starting the bread making process.
It seems like the Hamilton Beach 29885 bread maker has a 15-hour delay timer. However, it is only available for the following menu programs: Basic, French, Whole Grain and Sweet. You cannot use the delay timer function with bread recipes that contain perishable ingredients such as cheese, cream, milk or eggs.
The bread maker goes into a keep warm cycle after the baking cycle is finished. It will keep the bread warm for one hour. Nevertheless, it is recommended that you press and hold the STOP button until it beeps to cancel the keep warm cycle.
Remove the bread from the pan and let it cool for at least 30 minutes before removing the kneading paddle with the hook tool and slicing the bread loaf. The bread loaf might get a little damp or its crust might darken too much if you leave it inside the bread pan for the whole 60-minute duration of the keep warm cycle.
Power outages are always a problem when using a bread machine. The Hamilton Beach 29885 will resume the bread making process automatically if power is restored within 7 minutes. However, if the dough is beginning to rise when the loss of power occurs, then you will have to discard the dough.
Hamilton Beach 29885: Menu Programs
- Basic (made with basic bread flour).
- French (fluffy bread made with fine flour).
- Gluten Free (gluten-free recipes or mixes).
- Whole Grain (heavy bread made with whole wheat flour or rye flour).
- 1.5 LB Express (make a 680-gram bread loaf in 80 minutes).
- 2.0 LB Express (make a 907-gram loaf in 115 minutes).
- Dough (prepare yeast dough for pizza crust or buns).
- Quick (bread recipes that use baking powder or soda).
- Sweet (bread with extra ingredients such as fruit, nuts, cheese etc.).
- Cake (kneads, rises and bakes cake recipe).
- Jam (make a basic jam with fresh fruit).
- Rise (for rising dough recipe or frozen bread dough, up to 6 hours).
- Bake (use it to bake dough made with Rise program).
- Artisan Dough (provides a long rise time for better texture and taste).
Artisan Dough Program
You place all the ingredients of an artisanal dough recipe into the pan in the correct order (water, salt, flour, yeast). Choose the Artisan Dough menu option and press the start button. The bread machine will now mix, knead, rest and rise the dough for five hours!
Remove the dough from the bread pan when the program is completed and place it on a lightly floured surface. Form it into a ball and let it rise for another 60 to 90 minutes, or until it has doubled in size. Preheat your kitchen oven to 400 °F. Put the dough on a baking pan, make a few cuts across the top of the dough and spray it with water. Bake it in the oven for about 30 minutes.
The Hamilton Beach 29885 user manual offers only one artisan dough recipe for “Rosemary Garlic Boule”.
Adding Ingredients
Most bread machines, except those with an automatic yeast dispenser, use the same sequence for adding ingredients into the bread pan. First you add liquid ingredients such as water. Then you add dry ingredients such as sugar, salt and bread flour. The last ingredient is the yeast, which is placed on top of the bread flour in a shallow indentation. The yeast should not be in contact with the liquid or salt. These ingredients are mixed together by the kneading paddle after you start the bread machine.
The Hamilton Beach 29885 does not have an automatic raisin nut dispenser. You have to add these extra ingredients by hand when you hear the bread machine beeping about 12 times. This occurs approximately 30 minutes after starting the Sweet program. Open the lid and pour in the raisins, cranberries or nuts. Close the lid.
Bread Removal
The bread machine beeps ten times when the baking cycle is finished. It then goes into the keep warm cycle for one hour. It beeps ten times when the keep warm cycle is done. Press and hold the STOP button to cancel the keep warm cycle and before unplugging the bread machine.
You should use a pair of oven mitts to open the lid and grab the handle of the bread pan because the baking chamber will be hot. Lift the bread pan with the handle and carefully turn it counterclockwise to remove it from the baking chamber.
Tip the bread pan upside down and shake out the bread loaf on a wire rack. Let it cool for 10 minutes before using the included paddle hook to remove the kneading paddle from the bottom of the bread loaf. The kneading paddle baking into the bottom of the bread loaf is one of the biggest disadvantages of an automatic bread maker.
Hamilton Beach 29885 vs. 29882
There are a few minor cosmetic differences between these two automatic bread makers. The Hamilton Beach 29885 has a stainless steel housing, while the 29882 has black plastic. The control panels are also different, but they both have a viewing window in the lid.
The Hamilton Beach 29885 has two extra menu programs: Artisan Dough and Rise. The rest of the programs are the same, even though the number sequence has changed.
The 29885 supports three loaf sizes: 1-lb, 1.5-lb and 2-lb. The 29882 model only supports two loaf sizes.
The 29885 also has a 15-hour delay timer, compared to the 13-hour delay timer of the 29882 model.
Conclusion
The Hamilton Beach 29885 might be slightly more expensive than the previous model. If you are not going to use the Artisan Dough or Rise programs, then you might get the Hamilton Beach 29882 because it is one of the cheapest bread machines on the market.
Please note that both the Hamilton Beach 29882 and the Hamilton Beach 29885 are no longer available. For that reason, I suggest that you take a look at another Hamilton Beach bread machine, such as the Hamilton Beach 29987 (see price and details on Amazon – paid link).