Best bread machines

Cut down on those bakery visits and upgrade from the bread aisle of your grocery store with homemade bread. Here are our picks of the best bread machines in

We independently evaluate all recommended products and services. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Learn more. The entire process can take multiple hours, which isn't convenient or practical for many people. Enter: the modern bread machine.

Best bread machines

We independently evaluate all recommended products and services. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Learn more. Produce fresh loaves whenever you want with these top picks, no baking experience required. Summer is a freelance food and travel writer who began by writing about Swedish cheesemaking traditions in Jump to a Section. Few simple things yield more joy than a fresh loaf of bread. A slice of still-warm bread but not too warm, bread should be allowed to properly cool! To help you along on your baking journey, we recently put several of these appliances through their paces to determine the best bread machines available. With a large LCD screen, easy-to-clean components, and features that support baking far more than just your basic loaf of white bread, this is a great choice for experienced bakers who don't want to sacrifice quality for convenience. It even has a narrow viewing window to keep track of your loaf throughout the baking stages, making it a great choice for beginners and pros alike. We found the presence of two dough blades valuable for thorough mixing, which helps develop gluten structures for an airy crumb. The programmable cycles of the Virtuoso Plus make controlling each stage kneading, rising, baking nice and simple to adapt from one recipe to the next. This Zojirushi also excels at the process of baking itself, turning out evenly baked loaves with lovely golden crusts.

The Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker impressed us with how well it mixed, kneaded, proofed, best bread machines, and stretched the dough to make picture-perfect loaves. Each machine was first evaluated on its ability to produce a classic loaf of white bread, taking into account how easily the bread released from the pan, its texture, and the color of the crust.

We independently evaluate all recommended products and services. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Learn more. The Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker impressed us with how well it mixed, kneaded, proofed, and stretched the dough to make picture-perfect loaves. Bread machines are a convenience appliance, and even though some models advertise settings for making jam or kneading pasta dough, they serve one main purpose: to produce freshly baked bread in just a few hours and with very little hands-on work. In order to find which bread machine met our standards for high-quality loaves, we tested 20 of the most popular models to see which ones were the simplest to use, easiest to clean, and above all else, made great-tasting bread. This machine was spot on with its mixing, kneading, stretching, and proofing, baking up pillowy soft white breads and hearty rye loaves.

We spent close to 40 hours researching, testing, and retesting eight bread machines plus many more hours waiting for 38 loaves of bread to bake , and we think that the Zojirushi Home Bakery Virtuoso Plus is the best bread machine for most people. It proofs, kneads, and bakes evenly, reliably yielding better loaves than any other machine we tried. A favorite among the pros, the Zojirushi is sturdy, super reliable, and makes a standard-shaped loaf, unlike most other machines we tested. This is a good starter machine for anyone not ready to make a big investment. It kneads well and bakes evenly, but loaves come out taller than they are long. Unlike many other bread makers, it makes a standard 9-byinch loaf, and its two kneading paddles, powerful motor, and even temperatures yield lofty, golden-brown breads every time. It also allows you to program your own settings in addition to 14 preprogrammed options ranging from gluten-free to multigrain , which is useful for anyone interested in tweaking or experimenting with recipes.

Best bread machines

We independently evaluate all recommended products and services. If you click on links we provide, we may receive compensation. Learn more. The entire process can take multiple hours, which isn't convenient or practical for many people. Enter: the modern bread machine. By simply adding all of the ingredients and pushing a few buttons, a bread machine does the rest of the work for you—actually making the bread—rendering the process quicker and easier. Bread machines today are loaded with features and come in all shapes and sizes, so we found the most popular models on the market today and tested them. Anyone who takes home baking seriously will appreciate all the features and options packed into this Zojirushi bread maker, and its performance during testing made it our best overall pick. It has 15 different pre-programmed "courses" including a wide variety of bread, each with the choice of light, medium, or dark crust, but you can also create your own custom programs. This machine has two kneading paddles to make sure no bits of flour are left unmixed, and it has a hour delay timer so you can wake up to hot, fresh bread for breakfast.

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We also marked the machine down slightly because it sometimes needed extra mixing time to create a good dough, and because it was one of the louder machines tested. This model is landscape in orientation, which offered a good deal of space in front of the machine for prep. Best for Gluten-Free Bread. Siobhan Wallace. When we made banana bread , we got great color, even doneness, and perfect texture. Best bread machine FAQs. A bigger potential issue with paddles is that they can get bits of dough stuck to them that gets baked on and can be tough to clean off, especially if the paddles can't be submerged to soak or go in the dishwasher. Best Compact:. Donna Currie is a food writer and blogger specializing in recipes and kitchen gadgets. It can make loaves of up to 2. The touchscreen is very responsive and even locks when the machine has been set, to avoid any knocks or curious fingers fiddling with the controls.

The best bread machines will make delicious loaves each time, to rival your local bakery. And if you enjoy the aroma and taste of freshly baked bread, a bread machine is a good investment. Not only does it ensure every loaf is evenly browned and risen, but will do all the hard, manual work for you.

There's a gluten-free setting, too, but no gluten-free bread recipe in the manual. Overall, knowing how much time and effort you wish to commit to cleaning your machine is important when looking to make an investment in a countertop bread machine. Develop and improve services. It also comes with an automatic fruit and nut dispenser and a collapsible paddle. Cons Dough tends to stick to the paddle, and there are no dishwasher-safe components. Second, its elongated, horizontal pan creates loaves that are more of a traditional bread loaf shape, with the familiar dome on top of each slice. Instead of stopping the kneading process and manually adding the ingredients, an automatic ingredient dispenser will do it for you at the right time. Our top picks. The best value toasters for A large window even lets you check the progress of your bread as it bakes. Breadmakers vary in their energy efficiency, but it is possible to calculate how much energy an appliance will use, which in turn will help you cost up the impact it'll have on your bills. Accessories Measuring cup, measuring spoon, kneading paddle hook, soft cheese and yoghurt filters. The only limitation of the Oster compared to most other machines on this list is that its display doesn't show you what stage the bread in progress is in, although that's a feature that satisfies curiosity more than it affects performance, and the countdown timer lets you know when your bread will be ready.