Hob has a love/hate relationship with his breadmaker. On the one hand, he's a gadget man! And his peasant hindbrain is ecstatic over the concept of fresh, homemade bread whenever you want, with none of the hassle; this is a man who absolutely takes advantage of the delay setting, and wakes up to the smell of fresh bread. Who dreams fondly of bustling estate kitchens and dirt-floor cottages, cook fires under the stars and well-furnished flats. Who thinks of the friends and family gone that would have marveled at the variety and convenience possible just as he does.
On the other hand, there's a part of him that rails at the cold modernity and impartiality of the clanky old machine. Bread's been one of the only other constants in his life, changing as much as he has but still fundamentally the same as it was in the 1300's. The hearty peasant loaves of his youth. The finely-milled flour loaves he enjoyed as a Knight. The first thing he ate after seeing Dream again in 1689, starving for food and affection, both. What he used to sop up at least a little alcohol in the fallout of 1989. It means home and family and succor and warmth and love. It almost feels sacrilegious to take the human aspect out of it, when it's been such a huge part of his history.
This is how I learned that breadmakers exist. I've been living life wrong. I could have had fresh bread all this time?
I think the way you summarized it relates to a lot of things in Hob's life. All the things that have changed, and how each new amazing thing takes something with it. You don't know things are gone for good until they're gone and then you miss them, and so on. There's a lot of ways human life has become more individualistic, impersonal, disconnected in the modern age-- probably something Hob in particular would take note of, and one of his main points of nostalgia, in addition to how fast everything has to be now. Hob's the one with eternal time, and somehow still the one encouraging everyone around him to slow down a bit, and not feel like everything has to be crammed in all the time. Take some time to make your own bread, etc.
