The scent of baking bread is cruel.

[Manedwolf]

It suffuses the house long before it's ready. It makes your stomach growl like a starting-up diesel truck.

And you can't have any for an hour.

[Bigjake]

My woman puts the bread machine on a timer. 

 starts at 0500, and by the time i'm up and rolling, it's waiting there.  Warm, aromatic, tasty fresh bread.  Coffee maker is timed as well.  Hot bread and a bit of honey butter, and a mug of steaming hot coffee, food of the gods.

[Bob F.]

BREAD MACHINE?!?!?Blasphemy!! Mostly because I don't have one......

Love the smell of baking bread. Making turkey broth right now! YUM!! Smells great, roasted a turkey last week, carcass etc into the stock pot!!

Bob

[Gewehr98]

We use our bread machine at home constantly.

I also drove by the Gardner bakery every day enroute to work, and every evening as I returned.

We'd roll our windows down in the winter just to smell the fresh bread being baked there.    

[Manedwolf]

BREAD MACHINE?!?!?Blasphemy!! Mostly because I don't have one......

That is what this is. The Zojirushi X20. Makes perfect loaves every time, or makes and proofs dough for you to cook as a rustic loaf or whatever. I very much recommend this model to anyone ever considering bread machines. Loaves come out looking like bakery loaves, and are flawlessly baked.

This time it was a honey bread using teff flour. Significant cost savings, since you're using about 60 cents worth of ingredients to produce what would be the $6 and already stale loaves at someplace like Whole Paycheck Foods.

[K Frame]

For several years I baked all my own bread using a Red Star-branded machine.

Worked great, but I finally wore it out.

[Manedwolf]

For several years I baked all my own bread using a Red Star-branded machine.

Worked great, but I finally wore it out.

Thing with that yeast brand, I now only use Fleischmanns yeast, which is a product of Canada.

Red Star yeast is now a product of Mexico. I think it was (likely?) once a US product, but it isn't anymore. I personally don't trust Mexican quality control for food products, especially a packaged yeast that I want to be sure is 100% Saccharomyces cerevisiae without any, say, C. albicans getting in there...

I tried Hodgson's Mill yeast too, but the bread didn't rise right, so I went back to Fleischmanns and it's always perfect.

(Edit: I just found that Red Star was produced in Milwaukee for over 80 years, but was bought by Lesaffre corporation of France, who closed the plant completely in 2007 and put the label on yeast made in Mexico.)

[thebaldguy]

We use our bread machine all the time. Once in a while we make a square loaf for grilled cheese sandwiches and french toast. Most of the time we use the dough feature for hand shaped pizza dough, loaves and buns. We often freeze the buns before rising, and store in the freezer for future use. We then let it rise overnight or through the day for fresh bread in the morning or after work. It works pretty well.

We have good results using Dakota Maid bread flour from North Dakota.

[Manedwolf]

As for flour, I was using King Arthur, which is a New England local, but when it got to $4.99 for 5lbs of bread flour, I switched to Gold Medal Harvest King, which is pretty much an exactly duplicate in composition, unbleached high-grade bread flour. Just half the price.

For wholegrains, I still like Hodgson's Mill. They have good rye flour. Bob's Red Mill has a lot of stranger grains to experiment with.

My personal local favorite recipe is still anadama bread, and this is a REALLY good recipe for bread machines. It comes out perfect, a nice toasting bread, and it smells like molasses when cooking. Though I use bread flour and not all-purpose. Might need to add gluten otherwise...

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups water, divided
1/3 cup yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons vegetable oil
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 package dry yeast (about 2 1/4 teaspoons)
Preparation
Combine 1/2 cup water and cornmeal. Bring 1 cup water and salt to a boil in a small saucepan. Stir in cornmeal mixture, and cook 2 minutes or until thick. Stir in molasses and oil; cool.

Lightly spoon flour into dry measuring cups; level with a knife. Follow manufacturer's instructions for placing flour, yeast, and cornmeal mixture into bread pan; select bake cycle. Start bread machine.
Yield

1 (1 1/2-pound) loaf, 12 servings