I realise this might not be what the question has in mind, but we have a bread machine.
Just buying bread might be more 'automatic', but we've been evolving the process and recipe for the last 6+ months, and honestly the bread is now better than any but the best artisan loaves available locally, and hugely cheaper.
To save time, and overcome laziness, we pre-mix 'wet' and 'dry' 'kits' in batches of 6 or 10 loaves at a time, and divide into loaf-sized portions. Wet is water, sugar, honey, oil, salt, etc. Dry is various flours, oats, multigrains, etc.
When it comes time to make bread (usually the night before we want it), it's a simple matter of pouring a wet kit into the machine, sprinkling over a dry kit, some yeast, setting the timer and pressing 'start'.
The kids do that, and do most of the batch prep, which we/they've optimised for teamwork, and for example we've 3d printed scoops in the right measures for the recipe, to speed measurements.
So from my point of view, I almost have 'automatic bread' :)
Just buying bread might be more 'automatic', but we've been evolving the process and recipe for the last 6+ months, and honestly the bread is now better than any but the best artisan loaves available locally, and hugely cheaper.
To save time, and overcome laziness, we pre-mix 'wet' and 'dry' 'kits' in batches of 6 or 10 loaves at a time, and divide into loaf-sized portions. Wet is water, sugar, honey, oil, salt, etc. Dry is various flours, oats, multigrains, etc.
When it comes time to make bread (usually the night before we want it), it's a simple matter of pouring a wet kit into the machine, sprinkling over a dry kit, some yeast, setting the timer and pressing 'start'.
The kids do that, and do most of the batch prep, which we/they've optimised for teamwork, and for example we've 3d printed scoops in the right measures for the recipe, to speed measurements.
So from my point of view, I almost have 'automatic bread' :)