I have 2 manual bread makers with 5 accessories on each, one on my left & one on my right.
. Add the ingredients to a bowl & mix or also use a food processor (big stand mixer not even needed & way to high in cost for me anyway) to help with the basic mixing & then knead by hand for 5-10 mins. 1st rise or proof 2-4 hours, then punch down & divide into 2 loaves & then proof again 2-4 hours or overnight in the fridge, then bake in my counter top, tall, $130 CDN, Oster brand toaster oven (tallest lowest cost oven I could find & produces excellent results. Some Cuisinart or Brevelle small ovens, while highly rated as "ovens" were just far too expensive for me & were especially, just too short & so burnt the tops of normally risen loaves. Dedicated bread ovens are extremely expensive.)
My results are EASY, customizable and make very very good whole wheat multi grain flax bread. Quite heavy (or whatever weight & type one prefers, as it custom made). Seriously, the manual hand made process is SO incredibly easy to do. I only wish I had started 40+ years ago. And to think that the neither the recipe nor ingredients has changed for 40+ years!!! Machine bread makers overall, are not really time savers either. More hype than reality.
Like you, after running out of bread one day & with my living 30 kms from the nearest store, I looked at the idea of a bread maker, but could not justify the cost & how that translated to the cost per loaf & with pay back over such a long period of time. Instead I started reading & watching YouTube videos about hand making breads, first no kneads, which I did not do well nor like (yet) or find a good recipe, then learned that kneading yeast bread dough is so incredibly easy, short & gets easier with practice that over a few practice loaves & different recipes, I found a favourite, EASY, very healthy, very low cost, recipe & method that had me shaking my head at the idea of a) why I ever bought bread from a store when it is SO EASY to make by hand & b) the bad idea (for me) of even thinking that a machine bread maker would be a good & cost efficient idea. Machines have quite high costs, high energy costs, & importantly, recipe limits & bread compromises. Bread machines (for me) didn't appear to save much time either, in making, baking or clean up & simply CANNOT match the quality nor variety of hand making bread. Bread machines are also limited to bread loaf sizes & were too small for me.
I had wrongly thought that bread making ingredients & method was just far more complicated that it actually is. I suggest you forget the machine to start with & learn to do it by hand. You will soon learn tricks, efficiencies & ingredients that will make the process simple & elegant. Also, then you will have a better idea of what you want from a machine as they are not all equal. My 2 hand made loaves from the other day were a couple of my best yet & clean up was as well. Cost per loaf of whole wheat multi grain with ground flax, including energy, was about $.75 cents per loaf (CDN).
I take this a step further & as a game, now try to hand make more & more food, meals, condiments, recipes & other items that I can vs. buying manufactured or restaurant foods. The cost savings are usually enormous, the time required is surprisingly minimal & the tools required are also few. Mind boggling how easy & quick it is to make many many things that one can pay a lot of money for to someone else. Also there are many online recipes out there to make many manufactured foods or tastes.
Pizza dough is even easier than bread dough & home made pizzas are so incredibly easy & quick, that it boggles my mind why one would pay so much to have someone else make it & deliver it or to eat out. The web has so many easy excellent quality pizza dough recipes out there, as does YouTube. No way does one need a machine to make pizza dough, when your hands can do it in a few minutes with very few ingredients. Keep the money in your bank account!!!!
Fun game I find. I only wish I had started it 40+ years ago