It’s the week before Christmas in 2006. My mom is gazing into a whirring, R2D2 lookalike machine on the counter. The kitchen smells like rosemary, a scent that’s wafting generously from the machine as a blob of dough slowly rises inside. Her bread machine, already old at that point and seemingly unbreakable, helps her make countless loaves of rosemary bread, which she will then distribute to our neighbors as a gesture of holiday-induced goodwill.
That iconic scent of freshly baked rosemary bread permeates my memories of the holidays; to this day, I only really cook with rosemary in December. But my mom’s bread-baking wasn’t limited to Christmastime; during the rest of the year, she would make fluffy white bread and yellow-tinged egg bread, whole wheat sandwich bread and braided challah-like loaves we ate plainly buttered so as not to obscure the natural flavor.
She made it all with that machine, the bread machine, an appliance that for decades fell by the wayside. Bread machines rose to popularity in American homes in the 1990s, but they weren’t a long-lived success. Before long, seeing a bread machine in someone’s house was a rare occurrence; my mom may have been one of the few who kept using their bread machines consistently throughout the 2000s. In a 2017 article for TASTE, Tatiana Bautista argued that a widespread fear of carbs during the late ‘90s and early ‘00s led to the bread machine’s demise. The gluten-free movement probably didn’t help either.
But things are changing, and bread machines are becoming relevant once again. During the early lockdown days of the COVID-19 pandemic, many took up bread baking, a notoriously time-consuming project. What else did we have to do besides sit in our houses all day? Our Instagram feeds were suddenly populated with loaves upon loaves of homemade sourdough. People wanted to avoid the grocery store as much as possible, and baking bread at home meant that they had to go food shopping less frequently.
Now, some are back in the office, and for many of us, life has returned to its previously busy pace. What has changed from pre-pandemic times, though, are the prices: everything, including bread, is more expensive now. Here in the Northeast, I consider myself lucky if I can find a decent loaf of bread for under $5.
This confluence of factors may be why bread machines seem poised to make a serious comeback. Earlier this year, The New York Times attributed a new generation’s interest in bread machines to inflation; prices are now so high that some are looking for alternatives more appealing than a sad plastic package of Wonder Bread. Unlike the machines of the past, today’s bread machines are often relatively affordable—you can find them for prices as low as $60 on Amazon—and unlike baking bread completely from scratch, bread machines do a lot of work for you. While mixing and kneading dough and shaping a loaf can take close to an hour depending on what recipe you’re following, bread machines often require as little as 15 minutes of prep time before they do all the rest of the work for you.
Personally, I’m not one for having a ton of kitchen appliances cluttering my counter space. In my mind, most appliances are functionally useless; the same task can be completed on a stove or in an oven. But I have to admit that having a bread machine does make sense, especially considering the rising cost of food. You can have amazing quality bread at a fraction of the price you would pay if you were to visit your local bakery, and it doesn’t even take a significant amount of time to make it, considering that all you really have to do is measure the ingredients correctly before the machine mixes, kneads and bakes the bread all in one go.
Admittedly, the bread machine has not yet achieved the widespread popularity of the Instant Pot or the air fryer, but I want to think it’s getting there. This year, my parents found an old bread machine at a thrift store, packaged it up and shipped it to me. Despite the learning curve, it’s quickly become one of my favorite kitchen tools—I frankly don’t have the patience to make bread from scratch. Now, I’m just looking forward to December, when I’ll follow my mom’s recipe for rosemary bread and my apartment will be filled with that familiar scent from home. I’ll have to make sure to take my neighbors a loaf too.
Samantha Maxwell is a food writer and editor based in Boston. Follow her on Twitter at @samseating.