Linda, that's how I was with my bread machine, until I took the "bread" part out of it. These days, I use it only as my hands, letting it do the mixing and kneading with the "dough" cycle. After it's done with the hard work, I take that lovely lump of gooey deliciousness out of the pan, plop it onto my pastry board and do a little kneading and patting, form it into shape, and either put it into a baking pan (I usually use my Bennington Pottery loaf pan, but metal bread/loaf pans work just fine, too), cover, and let rise in a warmish area. When it's done rising, then I bake it. I've also formed the dough into a round loaf, or a long loaf like Italian, and once even made two loaves of French-style bread.
I almost brought my bread machine with us to OH for the holidays.
Our daughter was a bit disappointed to see it didn't get to make the trip. I can't wait to get back to my bread machine and start making bread again. - except for the part that we'll then be 600+ miles from the kids...