David Cameron may have famously avoided knowing the price of a loaf of bread with the excuse “we have a bread maker”, but freshly baked bread in your home is hardly the preserve of moneyed politicians.
You can buy an automatic bread maker for less than £50, and as a fresh loaf will only cost you around 80p, compared to around £1.20 from the supermarket (you're not catching us out with that one), you’ll make your money back in a couple of years. More importantly, you can enjoy freshly-baked bread, where you know exactly what's gone into it. There’s also the convenience factor, as you can have a new loaf every morning without going to the shops, and you can even branch out into speciality fruit breads, ciabatta and a world of other tasty treats.
There are plenty of bread makers to choose from, with prices ranging from under £50 to over £200, so you’ll need to think about the kind of baking you plan to do before you buy. Our buying guide below will tell you what to look out for in a bread maker, to help you make the right decision.
Buying guide
No matter which bread maker you choose, the baking process will be similar. Add the ingredients to the bread pan, put the bread pan in the bread maker and choose the appropriate program, such as white or wholemeal. The baking process will then take between 3 and 5 hours, depending on the model, and at the end you will need to put the loaf on a wire rack to cool before you cut into it (or it’s likely to collapse).
All bread makers also let you specify a time delay, so you can measure out your ingredients the night before, then specify in what amount of time you need your loaf to be ready (usually to the nearest 10 minutes). For example, you can put your ingredients in the pan at 11pm, set the timer for 8 hours and your loaf will be ready at 7am.
The ingredients needed for a loaf of bread vary between bread makers, but usually consist of flour, salt, sugar, oil or butter, water, bread machine yeast and sometimes skimmed milk powder. All these ingredients can be found in most supermarkets. A minority of bread makers require vitamin c tablets, which you’ll probably need to order online.
Bear in mind that you’ll need to buy special ‘strong’ flour to make bread. Supermarket own brand strong flour is fine for white loaves, but you may have to use expensive branded ‘very strong’ flour to get a decent wholemeal loaf from some bread maker models. Our reviews mention when very strong flour was needed.
Added ingredients
Before buying, you should consider whether you would like to bake speciality loaves, such as raisin or sultana breads, as some bread makers make this easier than others. The extra ingredients required in such loaves need to be added after the baking cycle has started. Some bread makers will stop and beep when they need you to pour in your raisins, but this means you have to be there at the right time.
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Fancier models have an automatic dispenser, which you can fill up before you start the bake. This will then dump the ingredients in at the right point in the cycle, to help you get the perfect fruit loaf. If you’re going to be baking such loaves more than occasionally, you’ll certainly appreciate having an automatic dispenser.
Custom recipes
You can change the way your loaf turns out by altering the balance of ingredients, but the very fanciest bread makers take this a step further, by letting you set custom baking programs. If your bread maker has this feature, you can choose how long you want each stage of the baking cycle to be, from resting to kneading to rising and baking. You can then store these programs as a preset: some machines have five presets, and some can store up to nine. If you’re serious about baking and want to tweak each recipe to perfection, look for a bread maker that lets you fiddle around with the built-in recipes.
Best bread makers for 2016
Panasonic SD-ZB2512 review - our Best Buy bread maker
Panasonic is a big-brand in bread makers and this is the company's top-of-the-range model, so we were expecting to be impressed. It looks the part with its shiny metal body and its tall, narrow body means it doesn't take up much space on your worktop. It has automatic dispensers not only for fruit, which is common, but also for the yeast, so it's not activated before it should be. It even takes into account the temperature of your kitchen, though that's not likely to be a big problem in the temperate UK.
The control panel is simple to understand and once navigated the resulting bread was excellent, living up to Panasonic's reputation. Light-and-fluffy white bread, a consistent wholemeal that held together when cut and a good raisin loaf with evenly distributed fruit. The Panasonic isn't cheap but it's worth the extra over rivals and even it's own cheaper siblings. Read our full Panasonic SD-ZB2512 review for more details.
Fruit and nut dispenser: Yes (+ yeast dispenser), Number of programs: 33, Time to make standard medium white loaf: 4h Buy the Panasonic SD-ZB2512 now from John Lewis
Kenwood Bread Machine BM450 review - highly programmable at a low price
The silver and black Kenwood is pretty massive by bread maker standards, so you'll need a lot of worktop space to spare in order to find room for this one. It looks great, though, and while the controls can be a bit fiddly it's highly programmable. You can tweak the length of each part of the baking programme and store up to five custom programmes in the machine's memory. Letting you fine tune the bread maker to your own tastes and choice of flour.
For those who like to see what's going on their's a window in the top and a light, so you can keep an eye on your bake - though we're not sure it's really necessary. Its big size is reflected in some big loaves, following the standard recipes provided, so if you like a big slice of bread the Kenwood is a good choice. The white load was excellent with a very even texture, while the wholemeal was a touch on the dry side and fruit-loaf bakes had a good even spread of raisins. It's a good buy for the money, particularly if you like big white loaves and the ability to tweak endlessly.
Read our full Kenwood Bread Machine BM450 review for more details.
Fruit and nut dispenser: Yes, Number of programs: 32, Time to make standard medium white loaf: 3h 10m. Buy Now from Amazon
Russell Hobbs Stainless Steel Breadmaker 22710 - Good bread, good value
If you're looking for something more reasonably priced then we'd recommend this Russell Hobbs for around £80. The controls are straightforward and simple to get to grips with, but there's no automatic fruit or nut dispenser here, so you'll need to add these manually at the right time if desired. Of course, that's no loss if you're just planning on producing typical loaves. There's a window but no light, so you'll need a torch to see your loaf, not that we ever check on these things anyway.
The resulting bread is certainly up-to-scratch. The standard white loaf was a touch on chewy side in head-to-head tests but it's not a big complaint and it was evenly baked, with a good crisp crust. The wholemeal did tend collapse in a little at the top but that didn't effect the excellent texture and even crumb. It's a bit of bargain at this price, especially if you'll mainly be making wholemeal loaves.
See our full Russell Hobbs Stainless Steel Breadmaker 22710 review for more details.
Fruit and nut dispenser: No, Number of programs: 10, Time to make standard medium white loaf: 3h 18m. Buy Now from Amazon
