We need to buy a bread-making machine.
Do you guys have recommendations?

Panasonic usually get good reviews

Do you have a good oven (i.e., one that reliably gets to 450F)? Then all you really need are your bare hands, a big bowl, and a handful of sundry bits (e.g., small measuring spoons). It's helpful to have a baking stone (just a large piece of slate, really - mine was $25 at a kitchen supply store). I'm also fond of spray oil (to keep things from sticking) and silicone parchment paper (makes it easy to get wet/sticky bread into the oven).

Notably, if your oven is a bit on the dodgy side, then you might wish to get yourself a Dutch Oven and pursue the no-knead method of baking (link from this very bbs when I first got into the technique).

Most people I know just use a bread machine simply to avoid manually dealing with the whole mix/knead/rise/knead cycle.

That's time better spent playing video games.

Then they plop the properly prepared dough into a loaf pan (or whatever) and use their real oven to bake.

The mix/knead/rise/knead cycle turns out to be largely unnecessary, so long as you're willing to prepare your dough a solid day in advance of baking. You can let time do the same work.

+1 for Panasonic (actually, that goes for most anything they make), we have a Panasonic bread machine that has been going for years at an average of a loaf every two days.

Thank you guys, this is very helpful.
We are planning to make bread quite often, and it will have to be gluten-free (my gf just found out to be celiac); a bread making machine will bring some time saving, less clutter in the kitchen, less chances of gluten-contamination. So, while we are already making bread in the oven every now and then, a machine still seems to me a good thing to have.

I'll look into Panasonic, then! Thanks again.

We have a panasonic and it's brilliant. We use it a lot of the time to make pizza dough as well.