My wife brought home a bread maker from a garage sale for five dollars. It was from 1998 and had one setting. The bread came out shaped like a cube with a hole in the bottom where the paddle was. It tasted fine but looked ridiculous and took up half our counter.

I was ready to banish it to the basement when a friend served homemade bread at dinner — real bread, with a crust that crackled and a crumb that was actually bread-shaped. She made it in a bread maker. I realized the problem was not bread makers in general. It was our specific bread maker from the Clinton administration.

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Why a Bread Maker Instead of an Oven

You can make bread in an oven. People have done it for thousands of years. A bread maker automates the timing, temperature, and kneading so you do not have to think about any of it. Dump in ingredients, press a button, come back to bread. It also handles the proofing — the warm rise that makes dough double in size — which is the hardest part to get right in a cold kitchen.

The financial argument is simple. A loaf of decent bakery bread costs five to seven dollars. A bread maker loaf costs about sixty cents in flour, yeast, salt, and water. Even a fifty-dollar machine pays for itself in a few months.

The Machines Worth Buying

Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso is the one everyone recommends if money is not the first concern. It costs around three hundred dollars. The bread pan has two paddles instead of one for even kneading, and it produces square loaves that look like they came from a bakery — not a cube, not a mushroom. It also makes jam, cake, and sourdough starter. If you bake bread more than twice a week, this is the one.

Cuisinart Compact Automatic costs about a hundred dollars. It makes a two-pound loaf with a vertical shape — not as clean as the Zojirushi but better than machines that produce tall, narrow loaves. Three crust settings and a thirteen-hour delay timer. This is the one I would buy for a normal household that makes bread once or twice a week.

Hamilton Beach Artisan at around seventy dollars is the budget winner. It is noisy during kneading and the nonstick coating wears after a few years, but the bread comes out fine and it has a gluten-free setting that actually works. For a household that wants to try bread making without a big investment, this is the safe starting point.