Yes you can make bread the manual way, and it does produce good bread. But the process takes a lot longer, and is more hands on (no pun intended!) cos you have to mix it, knead it, allow it to rise, knock back etc etc
The alternative is a breadmaker.
We have baked our own bread for the last ten years about 3 times a week, in a variety of breadmakers either free, cheap s/h, or bought from new, including Morphy Richards, Cookworks, and Kenwood. They have all failed within about two years usually due to the tin gland wearing out. Our current breadmaker is a Panasonic SD2500 and that is by far the best one although it is not cheap. But you gets wot you pay for. We get consistently good bread from this, and it's not wearing out as far as I can see. We would not go back to cheap breadmakers. When you get to know what you are doing it takes about 3-4 minutes to get the ingredients out, weigh them, put everything in the breadmaker set it up and pack up. The next intervention is to remove the bread from the tin when its finished.
My tip for a breadmaker is to use Canadian Very Strong Bread Flour which will give the best results (probably down to gluten content). Cheap flour does not.