Reddit mentions of The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook: A Master Baker's 300 Favorite Recipes for Perfect-Every-Time Bread-From Every Kind of Machine

It depends entirely on your needs and your standards. We bought this inexpensive Oster last summer and love it. Our motivation was that our kids are getting older and starting to devour a lot of bread. Going through 3-4 decent loaves of bread each week at $3 a pop adds up. Is the bread machine loaf as good as what I can make by hand? No. But it's still pretty tasty, a basic recipe costs about $1 in ingredients, and I can pop out a simple sandwich loaf with about 10 minutes of hands-on time, including cleanup. You can't touch that hands-on time by hand, even with a stand mixer (which we also own). And if you're willing to test and tweak recipes a bit and willing to manually intervene at times (shaping the final loaf, for example), you can turn out some darn good bread with it.

The big question in buying a bread machine is how big you want your loaves to be. Specifically, 1.5 lb loaves vs 2 lb loaves. Most machines can make 2 lb loaves, but doing it well really requires a two-paddle model, which are larger, significantly more expensive, and more prone to breakage. If you can live with 1.5 lb loaves, you can get a smaller, cheaper, more durable single-paddle model like the one we have. A 1.5 lb loaf is basically a sandwich for all four of us plus a couple end hunks to gnaw on or a couple extra toast slices. So we make 1 or 2 of those loaves a week and supplement them with store-bought loaves. Still a decent cost savings - I suspect we've already paid for the $70 cost of the unit.

If you get a machine of any type or price, I strongly recommend buying this cookbook along with it. There will be recipes included with the machine, but they don't go into much detail and avoid specifying slightly hard-to-find ingredients like SAF yeast or vital wheat gluten that can really help you get better loaves. Just a little bit of knowledge and investment in the ingredients and technique yields much better results.

I'll echo the suggestions for finding one used. I got an old Breadman off Craigslist for $10. I recently bought a bread machine cookbook (used), and a whole new world has opened up.

I love my bread machine. I don't even like to eat bread that I didn't make anymore (unless from a legit bakery).

This cookbook has been so fun to go through! And informative for the bread making newbies - The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook: A Master Baker's 300 Favorite Recipes for Perfect-Every-Time Bread-From Every Kind of Machine https://www.amazon.com/dp/155832156X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_fb0SCbS9Z29T2

This book is great: http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Lovers-Machine-Cookbook-Perfect-Every-Time/dp/155832156X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1343517142&sr=8-1&keywords=bread+machine+book

If you're looking for variety in your bread machine baking I recommend

The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook https://www.amazon.com/dp/155832156X

Tons of interesting recipes and I don't recall any that didn't come out as intended.

At some point I got bored with the bread machine because of its limitations but I'll still use some of the variations from this cookbook when I bake sourdough now.

Beth Hensperger's Bread Machine Cookbook

I don't know if it's heresy, but have you considered a bread machine? I have a Zojirushi Home Bakery Supreme (2 lb), and use it 75% of the time for mixing doughs. I make about 5 loaves/doughs a week in it.

It's super since you can program in your knead times/cycles/types (settings for white/wheat, for example), and mine has an automatic 'punch down' action built around its rising times. On mine I believe I can program up to 3 different rise cycles, each up to 24 hours? The enclosed machine works well for proofing between kneads (don't need to worry about drying out etc.), and I've started to plan meals around the timer function so I can have fresh dough ready for me @ 3pm for dinner that day, setting it up in the mornings alongside coffee & breakfast.

I've read many good things about the longevity of Zo's, and in my experience (several month ownership, making ~5 loaves and/or doughs a week) it's solid and reliable. I even like the loaves baked in it for sandwiches/sweet breads (Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook has LOTS of options).

I know it is missing all of the stand mixer pluses, but for me I'm not a baker of sweets/cakes and already own a pasta machine/assorted grinders and Amazon regularly puts it on sale for $200 free ship/no tax for most, sometimes down to $180 (create a pricewatch with camelcamelcamel for the best deal). There are also other machines with different options (timed yeast introduction, french bread cycles, etc.) but I don't know them, just that they're out there.

Good luck in your search! :)