[jacknews]

I realise this might not be what the question has in mind, but we have a bread machine.

Just buying bread might be more 'automatic', but we've been evolving the process and recipe for the last 6+ months, and honestly the bread is now better than any but the best artisan loaves available locally, and hugely cheaper.

To save time, and overcome laziness, we pre-mix 'wet' and 'dry' 'kits' in batches of 6 or 10 loaves at a time, and divide into loaf-sized portions. Wet is water, sugar, honey, oil, salt, etc. Dry is various flours, oats, multigrains, etc.

When it comes time to make bread (usually the night before we want it), it's a simple matter of pouring a wet kit into the machine, sprinkling over a dry kit, some yeast, setting the timer and pressing 'start'.

The kids do that, and do most of the batch prep, which we/they've optimised for teamwork, and for example we've 3d printed scoops in the right measures for the recipe, to speed measurements.

So from my point of view, I almost have 'automatic bread' :)

[actionowl]

You might have just convinced me to buy a bread machine...

To add a similar answer, only in the past couple of years have I had a nice rice cooker (we have a Zojirushi) that keeps the rice fresh for ~12 hours. It is irreplaceable at this point (My wife is Asian and rice is a part of pretty much every meal.) Best appliance I have ever bought, gets used every. single. day. and have rice ready-to-eat throughout the day.

[helij]

We bought a bread machine almost three years ago. Since then we are yet to buy bread in a shop. The machine is amazing. It literally takes 3 minutes to prep. No fancy recipe. Spoon of yeast + 400g flour + spoon of sugar + spoon of salt + 20g of butter + 280ml of water. Quick program and fresh bread is done in 2h.

Highly recommend it. I don't want to advertise but we bought a well known Japanese brand after a lot of research.

[jsilence]

Please advertise! Genuinly curious.

[fendrak]

Probably one of these: https://www.zojirushi.com/app/category/breadmakers

[rdtwo]

Only one you should consider the rest are junk

[helij]

Zojirushi (which seems to be high quality as well) was mentioned but I went more mainstream and bought Panasonic SD-2511KXC. Looks like they don't make it anymore but there are similar ones available.

[jarno3000]

On my second Panasonic after over 15 years of making bread at home. Highly dependable and pretty much guaranteed a good loaf every time.

[jacknews]

"You might have just convinced me to buy a bread machine..."

It also makes excellent pizza dough ...

"My wife is Asian and rice is a part of pretty much every meal."

Strangely, I am in a similar situation, and do not have a rice cooker. Time to go shopping.

[alexfromapex]

Thanks for sharing, sometimes the best answers aren’t exactly what was asked

[m463]

We used to have a bread machine years ago.

The best part was the smell of freshly baked bread.

The part I didn't like was the big hole in the loaf where the bread mixing paddle thing was. Has that been solved?

[jacknews]

Indeed, we usually program it to be ready by morning - so we wake to the smell of fresh-baked bread, it really fills the house - no need for an alarm!

The paddles thing hasn't been solved AFAIK, I think they'd have be lowered and raised from the lid, rather than retracting through the waterproof pan. But anyway, with a dual-paddle machine, it's not such a big deal.

[lenova]

Sorry for the late reply, but what's your go-to bread machine recipe?

[jacknews]

~750g multigrain

wet kit (optimised to fill a nominal 330ml bottle):

  water       301g
  oil          30g
  salt         10g
  honey        10g 
  sugar         9g (or just 20g honey)  
  cider vinegar 5g
  lime juice    5g

dry kit:

  white flour  400g (still experimenting to replace some of this with healthier options)
  quick oats    50g  
  wholemeal     30g (coarse)
  white sesame  tbsp
  black sesame  tbsp
  sunflower     tbsp
  flax          1/2 tbsp
  milk powder   12g
  ginger powder 1g or 1/4 tsp

  yeast ~8g

It may or may not work well for anyone else. The initial goal was to replicate the 'Alpine' loaf that we used to buy regularly. We've gradually evolved the recipe for our specific machine, flour, process, etc, and I think we've now actually surpassed the goal by some margin.

[lenova]

Champion! I am going to try this out this week, thank you very much!

[jacknews]

Good luck! Let me know how it goes, especially if you have any suggestions or improvements.