When it comes to bread, nothing beats the smell or the taste of a warm, freshly baked loaf of white or brown. If you enjoy eating bread on a daily basis, why not shun the supermarket and invest in a machine that can make tasty loaves whenever you want them? Here are our top five best bread machines in 2016.

5. Oster CKSTBRTW20 2-Pound Expressbake

The Oster Expressbake is a budget machine with a good two-pound loaf capacity, making it ideal for large families of bread lovers. It’s not the best looking machine on the market, but it offers easy controls that allow nine bread and three crust settings for a variety of breads, dough, and jams, with bread ready to enjoy in about an hour. Making a good loaf does take quite a few attempts though, and two-pound recipes can get rather messy.

4. Zojirushi BB-CEC20 Home Bakery Supreme

One of the most expensive bread makers, but also one of the most full-featured, the Home Bakery Supreme by Zojirushi offers solid performance and excellent functionality. Features of the machine include delay start, three custom memory settings, and a range of basic and specialty cycles – 10 in total. This bread maker receives top marks for is dual paddle operation; however, it does have a tendency to create imperfect bread, with crusts often too crunchy.

3. Cuisinart CBK-100

Cuisinart is a brand synonymous with home cookery appliances, so it is no surprise to see it featuring prominently in our list of bread maker reviews. The CBK-100 bread machine is stylish and easy to use, featuring 12 preprogrammed menu options and a 13-hour delay-start timer. It is also brilliantly easy to clean with very few crevices and a removable – dishwasher safe – pan, lid and paddle. Sadly, these parts do not hold up all that well under constant, everyday use.

2. Zojirushi BB-PAC20 Home Bakery Virtuoso Breadmaker 120 Volts

The second Zojirushi on the list and the most expensive, the BB-PAC20 is an excellent bread machine for all those that are willing to pay top dollar. While price is an issue, performance definitely is not. The Home Bakery Virtuoso produces fine loafs and produces great crusts thanks to its revolutionary lid-fitted heater. It is also very easy to clean and constructed with high-quality parts that are made to last. Like the CEC20, this machine is very feature heavy and includes Zojirushi’s excellent dual paddles. If it were $100 cheaper, this would be the best bread machine out there.

1. Panasonic SD-YD250 Automatic + Yeast Dispenser

The Panasonic SD-YD250 is regarded as the best bread machine in the world by pretty much everyone that has ever used it – and we absolutely loved it too. Overall, this bread maker offers great performance, a good range of settings and, crucially, priced within most people’s budgets. All the essentials that you would want from a bread machine are offered here: three-loaf sizes, delay-start timer, dough-only cycle and a yeast dispenser, and results are always consistent. This is a top machine.