I'm wondering what you mean by "the regular way", BD? There are som many ways of making bread that you risk sounding dogmatic.

I'm very into delayed fermentation, and the use of preferments, etc. All the things pioneered by Peter Reinhart. Some breads, using those methods, can take as much as three days. And all of them take at least two.

Whether using Reinharts methods, or typical bread recipes (which are based on fast rising and low hydration), or a bread machine, however, almost all the time is wait-time. And you can do all sorts of other things between stages. So, like time spent in Brooklyn, it doesn't count.

I have one of those little Sunbeam bread machines from WalMart. It was only like $40.
I bake bread in occasionally but more than anything I use the dough setting to knead/rise my dough to bake in the oven. Im not fond of the shape the bread comes out of the bread machine in.

Always have sour-dough starter in the fridge... if'n I don't use any in a week's time- I toss a bit and keep feeding... couldn't live without a healthy mother in the fridge! And at holiday time, everybody gets a peanut-butter jar of it! Great for everything from breads and biscuits- to pancakes, waffles and pizza crust! KYH's got the right idea with delayed fermentation!

The regular way, meaning doing the dough with a stand mixer and a dough hook. That's the easy part.

But you have to manually let it rise for about 2 hours, punch it down, manually knead it again, shape it into loaves and manually let it rise again before baking it.


The Zojirushi does all that for you. You'll NEVER have to touch the raw dough at all from start to finish! That is, unless you want to Dough Only
cycle so that you can finish it by hand.

But to me, to do it by hand from start to finish, it takes practically all day!!

That is why I had to get up at 5 in the morning to start making dough for Parkerhouse rolls.