11 best bread makers for delicious home baking, tried and tested

Score: 95/100

Scoring the highest marks on test, this stylish and compact bread maker delivered impressive white and wholemeal breads. Each loaf had a nice, crunchy crust and golden colour, so you can create bakery-quality bread at home. The loaves were also well risen, fluffy and (most importantly) tasty, with all slices remaining intact. This machine also shone when it came to our gluten-free recipe.

The removable lid makes it easy to use, while the included recipe book is full of ideas to inspire a budding baker. Overall, this is a versatile bread maker that delivers consistently delicious bakes.

Score: 91/100

This small bread maker is fantastic for couples or those living on their own, with the option to make small 400-gram loaves or mini, 200-gram ones. It boasts dual temperature sensors, which adjust the programme as your bread bakes to ensure top-quality results every time. Plus, the 18 auto-programmes ensure you’re never stuck for ideas – both the pizza dough and cake settings worked a treat in our tests.

You can sandwich your cake together with some homemade jam too, as our experts achieved delicious, spreadable jam in two hours – something many bread makers struggle with.

Across the board, it baked excellently, delivering white and wholemeal loaves with good height, an even shape and fluffy texture. The rapid bake loaf was a little lopsided and chewy though, as was the gluten-free bread.

Score: 90/100

This impressively versatile model is ideal for any budding bakers keen to experiment with different recipes. Interior and exterior temperature sensors ensure a perfect crunch and the unique kneading blade gives your loaf the ultimate artisan texture.

During testing, it performed almost flawlessly. Our white and wholemeal loaves emerged well-risen, light and airy, with crusty sides and a slightly softer top. The rapid bake setting made delicious bread in just shy of two hours.

Score: 89/100

This beast of a bread maker boasts 32 programmes for making a range of breads, cakes, doughs and jams. It’s got the same high-tech dual sensors and smartly designed kneading blade as the Panasonic model above, which means you can enjoy a professional-standard loaf every time, but the manual settings encourage a little more creativity.

Our white and wholemeal loaves were well-risen, fluffy and flavoursome, and the rapid bake setting made a feathery light loaf in under two hours. Our gluten-free loaf was also tasty, if a little cakey, and the separate yeast and nut/fruit dispensers came in handy.

Score: 89/100

This is a substantial unit that would work best in a larger kitchen. It has an easy-to-read display and is also simple to clean, so you can enjoy fresh bread without any hassle.

Our wholemeal and white bread recipes produced bread that was well-risen, fluffy and delicious. If you’re gluten-free, you may want to avoid the included recipe – it fared better with our own version. The jam function left the strawberries intact but soft, and there was a distinct flavour. However, there was some undissolved sugar left in the base.

Score: 89/100

This one's a touch less fancy than some of its Panasonic siblings, making it perhaps better suited to beginners, but it still features 21 settings. It was really quiet when mixing and kneading, which the families of early morning bakers will appreciate, and we loved the fresh flavour and fluffy texture of both our white and wholemeal loaves.

The main downside is the lack of fruit and nut dispenser. There's also no viewing window for spying on our bakes. Still, our breads all tasted fantastic and our strawberry conserve was very tasty too.

Score: 88/100

This bread maker kneaded dough easily and both our white and wholemeal loaves came out near-perfect with a good colour and light texture. Our gluten-free bread baked well, too.

You’ll want to avoid making jam, however. Some bread makers excel at this, but after two attempts to whip up some strawberry jam, our testers decided this model missed the mark. Our jam was runny and more like syrup.

Jam isn’t a bread maker’s main purpose though, and this mean loaf machine was easy to use, has a handy timer and an extra ingredient beep. It also comes with a guide full of great recipes and tips for inspiration, and there’s a one-hour automatic ‘keep warm’ function, so it will taste oven-fresh whenever you’re ready for it.

Score: 87/100

Both this machine's white and wholemeal loaves were a hit with our experts, impressing on taste, texture and irresistible baking smell. But the surprise highlight was its rapid bake setting, an area where many of its competitors fall down. While it wasn't the quickest, taking two and a half hours, it managed to produce a springy loaf with golden, crunchy crusts over 40 minutes faster than the normal setting for white bread. Each loaf slid easily out of the pan too, with little to no damage from the paddle.

The gluten-free recipe was more disappointing – the loaf was chalky underneath and lacked the bounciness of the others. The bread maker remained stable throughout kneading and mixing though, and the instructions included loads of tips and tricks to help turn out star bakes.

Score: 87/100

Coming with a large recipe book filled to the brim with tips, this bread maker is ideal for bakers keen on experimenting. The modify button allows you to fully customise any of the programmes and the weights can be displayed in pounds or kilos.

It also comes with an automatic fruit and nut dispenser and a collapsible paddle. Our white and wholemeal loaves were light and fluffy with nice crisp crusts, and they had a rustic homemade appearance. However, the 1.25kg rapid loaf took two hours and 20 minutes (not so rapid!), but it did have a lovely soft texture.

Overnight bakers will love the 13-hour delay timer, allowing you to wake up to the smell of fresh bread.

Score: 81/100

Sometimes a classic white loaf is best, and this machine produced a fantastic one; it had an even texture and tasted and smelled incredible. In fact, most of our loaves came out well – including those using the rapid bake function, which produced crunchy crusts in almost half the time of the longest programmes. Even the jam function, a challenge for most bread makers, was successful!

Our testers liked the countdown timer, viewing window and keep warm function, but found it frustrating that you had to cycle through all the programmes in a set order to find the right one. Our gluten-free loaf didn’t come out as hoped though.

But gluten-free challenges aside, this is a worthy buy for preparing batch after batch of delicious loaves.

Score: 71/100

A touchscreen design and clear display won this bread maker brownie points with our testers, as did its large viewing window. The basic white and wholemeal settings produced decent loaves, with a light, fluffy texture and crunchy crust. Our testers found the gluten-free bread incredibly doughy on the inside though, so it’s best to avoid this one if you often cater to gluten-free diets.

The jam function didn’t have great results either – one recipe came out too thick, another too thin and ultimately our experts struggled to nail that goldilocks consistency. However, stick to more traditional breads and you can’t go wrong – with three loaf sizes and three crusts settings, this is a decent buy for any budding bakers.