Using your breadmaker to make bread is great any time but nothing can beat the smell of fresh baked bread in the morning. There are 2 ways to achive this - get up early or use your timer. A Timer function is pretty much standard these days even budget breadmakers like this Morphy Richards have a delayed start - which is essentially the same thing. Follow the instructions for your particular model - it should be quite easy. Here are a few handy tips learned the hard way - fairly obvious when you've got them wrong once.

Keep your powder dry.

Getting your yeast wet will start it to react immediately - we want to avoid this. I find that first adding water to the pan - followed by any oil (if you are using it) is the easy way to go. After that add your flour (in one go so it forms an island) and then add on top of that island your sugar and salt covered by the dried milk powder. Finally place your yeast carefully on top so that it won't get wet.

Don't go off to soon

If you are going to leave the ingredients in the breadmaker a long time before the bake will begin it makes sense not to use ingredients that will go off. For this reason i never use eggs or fresh mil when using the timer.