Gluten-Free Bakers, Rejoice! These Bread Makers Make Perfect Loaves Every Time

Humans have been baking bread for millennia, yet the process can still feel intimidating. If you've tried mixing up your dough in a stand mixer in the past and produced nothing but rock-hard disappointments, using a bread maker can help give you more consistent and delicious results for just a fraction of the time and effort.

If you have the space in your kitchen for a specialty cooking gadget and the desire to bake your own bread using your own ingredients, bread makers are a fantastic kitchen appliance to invest in. They're especially helpful for people who have trouble kneading by hand or specific dietary needs — and also anyone who'd rather not continually set a kitchen timer to babysit a dough ball as it takes hours to proof.

The Best Bread Makers

What to Consider

Bake Settings

Nearly all bread makers now come equipped with multiple bake settings to make loaves of varying sizes that are salt-free, gluten-free, light- or dark-crusted, and even filled with nuts and fruits — along with cakes and quickbreads, too. These specific settings will vary a little bit between models, so you may be able to save some money if you get a simpler machine with fewer functions.

The picks in this guide are equipped with 12-17 different bake settings that may also encompass yogurt- and jam-making as well.

Device Footprint

Unfortunately, bread makers are not the smallest kitchen appliances out there — they range from roughly the same size as an air fryer to a toaster oven (and can be just as heavy, too). They can be useful to have out on your countertop in the warmer months since they don't require you to turn on your regular oven to bake breads and cakes. However, if you're only an occasional baker, you'll have to make peace with sacrificing a little bit of storage space.

We've included the dimensions of each machine as well as their weights, so you'll be able to measure accordingly.

Timer

One of the biggest benefits of buying a bread maker is that you can bake completely on your schedule — this is possible because of the built-in timer that these devices are equipped with. Essentially, this feature allows you to add your ingredients to the machine up to 15 hours ahead of the bake, so it'll be done and ready to slice into at the perfect time.

Only one of the bread makers in this list (the Amazon Basics 2-Pound Non-Stick Bread Making Machine) lacks a timer function. Still, the trade-off here is that this is the least expensive model of the bunch.

Finally, make sure to keep in mind that bread makers are best at making sandwich-bread-style loaves. But if you want to make pizza dough or a rustic-style, round loaf, these machines can still do the kneading and proofing for you. Then, you can finish baking the dough in your regular oven on a pizza stone or in a Dutch oven. Reading the instructions and following the basic recipes that come with your bread maker is important, no matter which model you get. Once you have the basics of baking with your device down, then you can riff on it a bit more.

How We Chose

For this guide, we focused on bread makers that are equipped with numerous timer functions and bake settings — even if they are an investment, these types of products make bread-baking more accessible to people with busy schedules. We also looked at user reviews in making our product selections, honing in on those citing the machine's ease of use and any operational quirks to be aware of.

Once you master a basic bake on one of these machines, a world of delicious opportunities opens up. Here are the best bread makers you can buy.