I got a bread maker (and accidentally became a bread person)

Bread has always intimidated me. This may seem strange because I have always considered myself a baker. But until very recently, when I called myself a baker, I exclusively meant cakes.

Sweet things are my natural habitat. Cakes, biscuits, scones, tortes, slices, cupcakes: these make sense to me. My grandmother taught me to bake (cakes) when I was a child, and some of my earliest baking memories are of standing beside her in the kitchen, learning how ingredients become something much better when you mix them together and put them in the oven.

Baking became one of those skills I carried with me. I might test a new recipe or try different ingredients, but the underlying process felt familiar. There are rules, sure, but they are rules I understand (and therefore flout). Choose the flavours. Measure (or eyeball) the ingredients. Mix them in the right order. Put the cake in the oven. Set a timer. Do not open the door every four minutes to see whether it has risen.

Bread did not feel like that.

Why bread feels scary

Bread recipes seem to rely on instincts I do not possess. They say to knead the dough until it “feels right”, leave it somewhere warm until it has doubled in size, or wait until it passed a test involving a windowpane. None of this sounds like a precise instruction. I have poor spatial awareness. Husband says my internal thermometer is broken. It seems like the dough and I are expected to communicate telepathically. (I am also bad at the spaghetti wall thing. My pasta is ALWAYS overcooked.)

Then there is the dough itself.

Sticky dough must be one of the worst textures ever created. Somehow, it is stickier than slime. It clings to your fingers and works its way under your nails. It attaches itself to any part of you it can reach like a barnacle attaching itself to the bottom of a boat. You add flour to make it stop, only to discover that adding too much flour is apparently a bread crime and, congratulations, now your loaf has the structural integrity of limestone. Also, you are now being sent to jail.

For the record, I still hate sticky dough. Becoming bread-crazy has not transformed me into someone who enjoys scraping it from beneath her fingernails. I have simply bought foamy handwash which seems to remove it quicker and easier.

Then there was the timing. Bread needs to be kneaded, left to prove, shaped, left to prove again, and finally, baked. Some of those stages take a specific amount of time. Others take however long the dough decides they take, depending on the temperature of the room, the current zodiac alignment and presumably its mood. You need to remove the air bubbles, but you should also aim to have air bubbles.

This is not an ideal process for a person with ADHD time blindness and a deeply optimistic belief that she can fit seventeen things into the time period normally occupied by two, and who is also very easily distracted by shiny things.

I could already picture myself starting bread at 10am, forgetting it existed and finding it at 7pm attempting to escape the kitchen. Or beginning a recipe in the afternoon because it would ‘only take a couple of hours’, then discovering at midnight that I still had another prove to go before baking.

Bread is unpredictable. It is messy. It requires forward planning, a keen understanding of dough, and an awareness of passing time. Ergo, bread is scary.

My year of change

I decided that 2026 was going to be my year of change. Big, scary, life-altering change.

FYI, this does not mean I suddenly acquired executive function, infinite energy or a willingness to touch sticky substances. It means that this year I decided that I want to try things that I had previously decided were too difficult, and to find ways of making them work for my actual brain instead of the imaginary version of me who remembers every timer and reminder, and enjoys kneading sticky substances for ten minutes.

Bread was on the list.

Fortunately, Husband is very loving and supportive. He is also excellent at solving problems with appliances.

For my birthday this year, he bought me a Panasonic SD-YR2550 bread maker. It mixes the ingredients, kneads the sticky dough, manages the proving times and bakes the loaf, all while I remained safely on the other side of the kitchen with clean fingernails. I simply have to measure ingredients, remember to add yeast to its specific section, and press some buttons. Abra-Cadabra, bread!

It was perfect. Husband had solved all my bread problems. Success!

The bread maker gateway

At first, the appeal was exactly what you would expect. I could put the ingredients into the bread pan, select a program and let the machine do the work. There was no dough stuck to my hands, no uncertainty about whether I had kneaded it long enough and no need to remember when the first prove had begun. I could even set a timer so I could put the bread on overnight, and in the morning it would be fresh and warm. (It’s definitely not ideal to cut warm bread, but it smells incredible.)

The machine kept track of the bread so I did not have to.

Then I started experimenting.

I made fruit loaf. I made a cheese and bacon pull-apart bread with the soft, fluffy white texture I had been chasing in a standard loaf. Oh, and I have tried all manner of different ingredients and ratios in Soft White Bread experiments 1 through 14.

Each success made me want to try something else. Each loaf taught me a little more about what dough should look like and how it behaves. The mysterious bread instructions started becoming less mysterious because I could watch the machine handle the parts that had frightened me.

And then something unexpected happened: I began taking the dough out before it baked.

The bread maker I now use to make dough

My bread maker is very capable of baking bread. I would like to make that clear before admitting that I now mostly use it to make dough.

This is not because it has failed at its assigned task.

Initially it was because I made pizza dough, which can’t be cooked in the bread maker. I then refrigerated the leftovers for several days and discovered that a long, cold fermentation could produce an excellent pizza base rather than an alarming science experiment.

Then I made cinnamon scrolls. A true highlight of the modern world and an exceptional reason to have to touch sticky dough. Also, a wonderful reason to make more cream cheese frosting.

Then as I became slightly more confident, it was because the machine removed the barriers that had kept me from learning. The machine still kneads without complaint. It keeps the dough contained. It handles the first prove while I wander away and inevitably become interested in something unrelated. And then it incessantly beeps at me until I come and take the dough out.

Once that part is done, I can shape the dough, add fillings, put it into a tin or divide it into rolls. I can give it a second prove (with two timers) and then bake it in the oven, where I have more control over its shape, crust and final texture.

Somehow, the appliance Husband bought so I would never need to handle bread dough has made me confident enough to handle bread dough. Yes, I remain a mess of contradictions.

Not enthusiastically, obviously. Dough is still sticky and continues to have an unacceptable interest in getting under my nails, but I am no longer afraid of it. Mostly.

Welcome to the bread recipe series

This series is not going to be expert instruction from someone who has maintained a sourdough starter for twelve years and can calculate hydration percentages in her head. Mostly because my math skills are not that good. Although to note, I did have a sourdough starter in 2017 (before it was COVID-cool). And while I could feed it, I always failed at the part where I had to remove half and turn it into something edible. Then it tried to escape my kitchen so I rehomed it.

This is the story of a cake baker learning to make bread with an extremely helpful machine, a collection of the recipes that have worked for me, and an honest record of the experiments that did not go entirely to plan. (Yes, I have managed to forget to add the yeast to the specific yeast compartment.)

I will eventually share the fluffy white loaf I am still trying to perfect, the cheese and bacon pull-apart bread that haunted me from my teenage years working at Baker’s Delight, cinnamon scrolls, fruit bread, pizza dough and whatever else Bread-Crazy Meeghan decides to attempt next.

Which, honestly, could be anything. When I say ‘Bread-Crazy’, this isn’t an exaggeration. We’re on our fourth 5kg bag of bread flour since mid-June this year.

There will be practical notes about what I changed, what I would do differently and which parts the bread maker handled. There will almost certainly be very amateur photos of dough in various states that I have taken to ask whether it looks right. And there may be strong opinions about crust colours.

Mostly, though, this series is for anyone who likes the idea of homemade bread but has been intimidated by the process — especially if sticky textures, unreliable time perception, or an inability to plan four hours ahead have made traditional bread recipes feel impossible.

As for me, I got a bread maker because I was scared to make bread. Now I use it almost exclusively to make dough because I have become bread-crazy. Apparently 2026 really is my year of change.