Haha @enchantedspirit, please try one more time, it really is worth it! Funny how it's always the hubbies who buy them :) When hubby arrived at home with a bread machine a couple of years ago, I also ignored it, was quite irritated with this thing taking up counter space. But once I tried it and that smell of hot bread woke us in the morning, I was hooked! So now my second machine packed up, hubby's been too busy to take a peek, he may just arrive with a new one soon instead of opening it up and having to try and figure out what the problem is.
The secret is the order of ingredients - liquids, salt & a little sugar or honey first, a small dash of oil or biggish blob of butter, then the flour and lastly the yeast which must stay dry. We have smaller sachets of yeast (7 gram) here, specifically for the bread machine. Depending on how fresh the flour is, we sometimes have small loaves and other times it rises so much that it hits the lid, but either way it still tastes great! I mostly make wholemeal bread.
Thank you for your lovely comments, I get hungry every time I look at that pizza, it was so yummy as was the bread.
Hope you soon become emotionally strong enough to face the battle of the bread machine :):) Please let me know who wins!