Shawn, you could easily upgrade those outlets to these and I bet a breadmaker plugged into one of them would have less noise while in use.

Homemade bread definitely needs a starter if you want any sort of flavour. If you can't bother with that the "No Knead" recipe is pretty amazing. Makes a flavourful, crispy thin crust dough for pizza as well.

I would be in the camp to not bother with a bread machine. Convection oven for me.

http://www.steamykitchen.com/168-no-knead-bread-revisited.html

I've gotten very good results with the recipes from the King Arthur Flour cookbook. Haven't tried anything with a starter, and I get pretty good flavor. Just not sourdough, obviously.

I put spikes on the bottom of my breadmaker because I thought I would get better bread, but it it put scratches all over my counter.

I went back to the rubber feet.

You should only use breadmaker spikes on carpeted counters. However, stabilizer bars work wonders.

Outriggers are a must for breadmakers, keeps the kids and/or pets from knocking them over.

The secret to good bread machine bread is Monteray Jack, chopped jalapenos and a good, home made, dried chile sauce (by using a sauce instead of chile powder, it adds to the moistness.)

So good, you won't care that it was made by a world ending robot.

As an added note, we've owned a Zojirushi BBCC X20 for about 9 years now.
I can't fathom how many loaves have gone through this thing. Everything from regular whites to cinammon raison, cheese and onion, three grain, rye, pizza dough.
We've tried a bunch of recipes.
It takes some of the guess work and watch work out of the process which is alot easier for anyone who doesn't have the time to do it by hand.
And from whatever method it is made, everyone just loves the fact it is fresh bread, period.

Too true. The loaves we make in our maker are completely devoured within the hour. Not much can beat warm, fresh bread with butter.

Ouch.
As a health nut friend of mine would say "so many empty calories".
But this is from the same dude who devours our fresh bread whenever he comes over. They never buy bread for their own household of four.

Something about having a bread addiction.