Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker Review

You’ll be looking a long time to find better loaves than those you can make with the Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker.

This bread maker certainly doesn’t come cheap, but it’s undoubtedly top tier — rivalling the Zojirushi BB-PAC20 Home Bakery as the best on the market right now.

But, of course, before you fork out for a top-of-the-range bread maker, you want to be sure that you’re paying a fair price for a brilliant product. Our in-depth review will examine absolutely everything you need to know about the Breville BBM800XL, including what’s good and what could be improved.

Let’s take it away…

Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker: In a Nutshell

• Weight: 16.85 lbs
• Dimensions: 16.4 x 9.6 x 13.3 inches
• Loaf capacity: up to 2.5 lbs
• Settings: 13 plus 3 crust colors
• Timer: up to 13 hour time delay
• Stand-Out Feature: smart LCD interface

Let’s take a tour around the features:

1. Extra large viewing window
2. Fruit and nut dispenser
3. Mute button
4. LCD screen
5. Bake progress indicator
6. Delay start button
7. Selection dial

Breville BBM800xl Bread Maker: Features

As you’d expect for a bread maker at this price point, there are plenty of jazzy features that come with the BBM800xl.

Loaf Size

You’re able to choose from 4 loaf sizes on the Breville BBM800XL bread maker: 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5 lbs.

It bakes just as well and reliably at every size — even at the monster 2.5 lbs level! This is really where you can see the extra quality of a Breville machine over a lower market brand like Oster. Families, in particular, will love the array of sizes to choose from.

Collapsible Kneading Paddle

This feature is one of the major differences between the Breville BBM800XL and the Zojirushi Home Bakery.

The unique kneading blade thoroughly combines ingredients before collapsing just before the baking starts. It has the advantage of not sticking to your bread as it bakes and minimizes the size of the hole left in the base of your finished loaf.

In practice, this feature has had a mixed response from bakers. Some people — especially those baking more delicate yeast-free loaves — have found that it still causes a significant hole in the bottom of the loaf when it collapses before baking. It seems a little hit and miss in this respect.

We found that the paddle was robust, easy to clean and built to last — sadly not something we can say about every bread maker paddle!

Automatic Fruit and Nut Dispenser

Another excellent feature of the Breville BBM800XL bread maker is the attached fruit and nut dispenser which automatically releases ingredients at the optimal moment during the kneading phase to ensure that the ingredients are evenly distributed throughout the dough.

This is ideal as it leaves you completely free to get on with your day without having to remember to manually add ingredients.

Large LCD Screen

For us and for many others, the large LCD screen is one of the best stand-out features of the Breville.

It’s large, readable and is super simple to use. The machine has a selection dial to choose your baking options, and your selections are clearly visible on screen.

There is also a handy progress indicator to show you exactly what stage of baking your bread is at, at any time.

Loaf Pan

The Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf bread maker comes with a rectangular, nonstick bread pan.

Loaves are always well formed and evenly colored, sized appropriately to fit most common toasters and bread slicers.

See more: our guide to the best electric bread slicers.

Customizable Baking Settings

13 different automatic settings are available with this machine, with 3 choices for crust color and special settings for gluten free and yeast free bread.

In addition there is a custom option which allows you to either modify existing menu settings or to create up to nine of your own totally unique settings. The machine comes with 46 step-by-step recipes and custom recipe charts if you want to get truly experimental with it.

Here are the available settings:

• Custom
• Basic
• Whole wheat
• Rapid
• Gluten free
• Crusty loaf
• Sweet
• Yeast free
• Dough
• Pizza
• Pasta
• Bake only
• Jam

Plus there are three options for crust coloring.

Delay Timer

Want to wake up to freshly baked bread first thing in the morning? With the 13 hour delay timer feature of the Breville you can do just that. Just prepare the ingredients before bedtime and set the delay start timer on the front of the LCD screen.

It Can Also Make Jam!

Call us easy to please, but we’re always delighted by bread makers that can do a little more than just bake bread.

The Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker also comes with a second blade dedicated to preparing jams, jellies and sauces that require mixing. Pizza and pasta is also possible with this machine.

There are recipes and step by step instructions for this included in the accompanying recipe book.

Large Viewing Window

We know we’re not the only bakers who love to watch our loaves rising…

The viewing window on the Breville BBM800XL is larger than average and comes equipped with an interior light which makes visually checking the progress of your loaf a cinch.

Breville BBM800XL Review

The Positives

This bread maker has overwhelmingly positive customer reviews, and it’s easy to see why.

Really High Quality Loaves

Fundamentally, the question you should be asking of your potential bread maker is, “how good is the bread?”

Thankfully, the answer with the BBM800XL is a resounding “amazing”!

Regardless of size, setting or loaf color, you can rely on excellent loaves and rolls from your Breville time after time.

This bread maker does exactly what it says on the tin: there’s no surprises when it comes to loaf shape, density or evenness of the bake.

Simple.

Large Loaf Sizes

Another huge plus to this bread maker is the fact that it can bake delicious 2.5 lb loaves — perfect for families. To be able to reliably deliver quality loaves of this size is a feature that many household bread makers simply can’t do (or can’t do well).

You’ll have no problem whipping up huge, fresh loaves every few days with the Breville BBM800XL.

Lots of Settings

The Breville BBM800XL offers a huge amount of choice for bakers, and even caters for those with dietary requirements like gluten intolerances.

There are 13 automatic settings available, 3 crust color options, 4 size options and almost 50 custom recipes that are available to program.

As such, this machine is popular not only with families who need something reliable and functional, but also with more creative and experimental foodies and chefs who can really test out their bread making skills with it.

It’s Easy to Use

One of the most common praises we hear of the Breville BBM800XL bread maker is how easy it is to use. Bakers especially value the large and intuitive LCD screen, which seems light years ahead of any of its competitors.

It’s hard to go wrong with this bread maker. There are only four buttons: delay start, modify, cancel, and start/pause, so you won’t get caught up in an electronic nightmare.

The screen clearly shows which settings you’ve chosen, how long remains and the progress of the baking process.

Easy to Clean

In tandem with the above point is just how easy the Breville is to clean once you’re finished with it.

It’s particularly straightforward thanks to the nonstick surface of the bread pan and the easy access collapsible paddle. It’s just a matter of a rinse and wipe.

Beautiful Design

Another thing we love about the BBM800XL is how damn good it looks.

Its silver finish is sleek and chic, the LCD screen is modern, and the viewing window is large and revealing.

This bad boy looks beautiful on our kitchen counter.

The Negatives

To be perfectly honest, it’s hard to find much fault with the Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker, although some buyers have identified some niggles and room for improvement.

It’s Quite Noisy

This seems to be a point of contention among buyers: some people find the bread maker works very loudly, while others insist that it’s quiet in comparison to other machines.

We’re somewhere in the middle. We don’t find it unduly loud, but you certainly can hear the intense vibrations when it really gets going. The only time that this could be a real problem is if you’ve set the delay timer and are baking overnight, and if your bedroom is near the kitchen or you live in a small apartment.

It’s Pretty Big

Another problem if you only have a small living space is that this bread maker is on the large size and could easily take up a lot of room on your kitchen counter.

At just under 17 lbs, it’s not exactly light either so you’re unlikely to be pulling it in and out of a storage cupboard if you’re using it frequently.

The dimensions are 16.4 x 9.6 x 13.3 inches — it’s worth taking a measuring tape to your counter to see the potential size damage if you’re concerned about this issue.

Other Areas for Improvement

• The fruit and nut dispenser could be larger
• The value of the collapsible paddle is hit and miss in avoiding holes in the bottom of loaves

Overall Verdict on the Breville BBM800XL Bread Maker

The Breville BBM800XL Bread Maker is definitely one of the best bread machines on the market.

It looks good, is highly customizable and is very user-friendly — and above all it bakes great bread.

The capacity to bake extra large loaves, and the incredibly intuitive LCD screen are two of the major selling points of this machine too.

Sure; it’s one of the more expensive machines out there, but we feel it deserves its high rating and is well worth the price.

Breville BBM800XL Tutorials

We *love* a good bread making tutorial, and there are plenty for this Breville model on YouTube.

Here are a few of our favorites that we can’t wait to try.

Where to Buy the Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker

Thanks to its popularity and status as one of the world’s best bread makers, you can find the Breville BBM800XL for sale in a multitude of places online, including:

• Breville USA
• Williams Sonoma
• Bed Bath & Beyond
• Best Buy

And, of course, you can also find it on Amazon.

---

And that’s the Breville BBM800XL Custom Loaf Bread Maker!

Will you be buying one?