Do you save money baking bread? - Page 2

[wombatclay]

We saved some money over the years making our own bread (leftover oatmeal can go right into the dough ) and now we save A LOT by making our own. DD1 was diagnosed with celiac disease so she can't have any gluten... no wheat, barley, rye. No wheat germ, no extra gluten to add that great chewiness. Gluten free bread is often in the 6-7 dollar a loaf range. For a small loaf of not so yummy bread. Doing our own baking is much cheaper, even with the slightly more expensive flour we have to buy.

Please do explore different recipes and techniques... I know it's overwhelming at the start but homemade bread is so much better than store bought! And even a bread machine is going to bring your bread budget down.

[luv-my-boys]

Originally Posted by springbride

For those of you who have tried making tortillas, can you post a link or recipe? What about a good recipe for soup rolls?
TIA

This is my tried and true tortilla recipe just like my grandma makes. Im hispanic and "know" tortillas. I personally dont like store bought ones because they just dont taste right to me, probably all the perservatives.

flour tortilla recipe (1 dozen- stays about 1 week in fridge cooked/freezes fine)

3 C. unbleached Flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
4-6 tbsp vegetable shortening or lard
about 1 1/4 C warm water (NOT boiling)

mix dry ingred. in bowl. cut in shortening/lard until its crumbly. Slowly add the water so dough is soft (shouldnt be sticky). Knead dough for a few minutes. Seperate dough into 12 equal sized balls and let rest. This will cause the dough to get a little dry...you want that.

roll out each ball to a tortilla. Heat on a griddle or pan. It will only take a few seconds to cook on each side. Tortilla will have nice browned spots on them when that side is ready. DO not use a high heat, a small-medium heat will do.

** I use an iron griddle to heat them up but I have also used a larger chicken fryer type pan. These are super yummy with a dollop of butter. I also have a super yummy mexican rice recipe if anyone wants it.

[luv-my-boys]

I totally cheat. I have a breadmaker and LOVE it. It saves us money but we are buying "gourmet" type breads. I am able to organic ingredients in bulk so that also helps plus we love bread so that dosent help.

On average if I were to buy a loaf it would be about anywhere from 3-6 dollars locally for what I get (organic bread/whole grains/fruits) basically not that cheap .50 bread with HFCS in it. So for "real bread" it has saved us a ton. Plus with our breadmaker I literally dumpt the ingredients in push a button (I even have a delay timer) and come back when its done (it even keeps it warm until were ready to eat it) I dont have the patience or "art" it takes to make oven type breads, i've tried. a special occassion/recipe sure but our day to day I liek our chubby squared loaves.

[newbymom05]

Yes, I def save money since I was buying Ezekiel bread at $5 a loaf and now it costs me under $1 and that's w/ buying little 5# bags of flour. I do buy yeast in bulk from Frontier, that's a big savings, but I don't have anywhere to store tons of flour,wish I did.

Re: baking, my DH bought us an Oster breadmaker and I LOVE IT. It is so amazingly easy. I put in liquid, flours, salt/seasoning, sweetener, yeast, shut the lid, push a button and walk away. Amazing!!!! And then a timer beeps and I take out a warm loaf of deliciousness. It even has a delay timer that I set to wake up to fresh bread. Fabulous! I highly, highly recommend the purchase. I think it's already paid for itself. I've made wheat, white, sandwich, sweet, fruited, and rye and everything has turned out perfectly.

That's the downside--it's paid for itself because we now eat a lot of bread. DH thinks he's gained 5# since we bought it.

[schrocat]

We have a Zojirushi breadmaker so we're not exactly saving money but it turns out the light fluffy Japanese style white sandwich bread that we love and can't find in the stores where we live. DH sets the timer at night and the bread is ready by 7 am when we get up. We also get to control the ingredients that go into it so no high fructose corn syrup and bleached flour to worry about.

[Terrilein]

I also have a bread machine and just buy bread mixes at the store. There are really good ones available here, too. I usually buy whole grain, multigrain or sunflower seed mixes for 0,65 €/kg and I get two loaves out of that. And I have yet to find such yummy bread at that price.

[CookiePie]

Yes we are saving money, & I'm using organic ingredients, which we can't afford in the store bought bread! Also there is no question what is in it! There are very few commercial breads that meet my standards, 100% whole wheat, no hfcs, no hydrogenated oils & relatively short ingredients list and at a reasonable price! So I just got back into making it again after falling out of the habit. Only thing is that we are eating it much quicker than we did the store bought stuff. I'm still hunting for some better bulk pricing, I think I'll get my costs down even more very soon!

[Llyra]

I think I definitely save money making my own bread. But my bread doesn't have all kinds of expensive ingredients. It's flour, water, salt, fat, and sourdough starter. The fat is often butter or olive oil, or bacon drippings, or whatever else I have around. I can make it without the fat, but it doesn't taste as good. All I'm really buying for the bread is flour, since I have the salt and fat in the house anyway.

If you're eating bread that comes really cheap, like Wonder Bread or day-old bakery bread that sells at a discount, you probably won't save much. And if you bake with complicated recipes that use specialized ingredients, you likely won't save much unless you compare it to the really fancy packaged health breads or artisan bakery breads.

I make mine by hand. I can't afford a bread machine, and would have nowhere to keep it if I could. It takes me about 20 minutes in the afternoon to knead it, although lately DS has been doing part of the kneading , and then just the deflating and shaping and baking, which take no time at all, just a minute snatched here and there between other stuff.

I think it's harder if you're not home much, but there's ways around it like the PPs mentioned.

[Ellp]

We like the multi grain and specialty grain breads around here and bought in a store runs around $3 a loaf, which lasts us 4-5 days. The bread is made somewhat locally, and contains what I would put in bread anyways, so in other words its pretty healthy.

I tried making my own, but by the time I bought all the special grains, seeds and took the time and effort to make the bread, it came out to roughly the same price but didn't taste the same. It dried out a lot faster and was a lot denser than the store bought bread.

For this reason, we prefer the store bought bread. We live in Canada though and things like hidden corn syrup isn't as big a thing here as it appears to be in the US.

[WorldsBestMom]

I believe it would be much more cheaper. As much as I love baking I do not have the time. I have bought bread straight out of the oven at a bakery couple of times its very delicious. However I have to watch my budget so I buy at the supermarket. Its necessary in my house hold as I have to prepare snacks for my little girl when she goes to school and when she is hungry at home an needs something to munch on..

[honey-lilac]

When we lived on the coast, breadmaking was a snap, and yes we did save money (seeing especially how bread cost tons there - everything did - and I could get bulk ingredients online). It was also a simple process - pop the ingredients in the bread maker in the evening, wake up to a loaf in the morning, ta da!

Then we moved to a dry, dry, high-altitude location. Here, bread making is a freaking event. I've FINALLY settled on a method that SORT of works - knead the dough out with the bread machine, then refrigerate, then knead by hand, then pop in the slow cooker for a few hours. That will come out half the time with a decent loaf and the other half the time with an inedible mess, depending on the temp and humidity (which sometimes changes from the start of the process to the end). No thank you. I will make them for special ocassions but I have no desire to do that all day - and the bread here is much cheaper in the stores, so if anything I would be breaking even. But, like a PP said, store bought bread lasts longer, so it's actually cheaper than making a new loaf per day.

I miss coastal living and waking up to fresh bread in the morning...

[Tizzy]

I have to say that as easy as it is to pick up a 2nd hand bread machine, I can't justify the time to babysit traditional homemade bread. Mine was actually given to me, and although it does take a fair bit of space (under the sink is the only space it will fit for storage), I stock up when I have the time and ambition. So I'll do a couple loaves a day for a week straight, put the machine away and freeze the loaves.
I also set the bread machine up in the laundry room so the noise doesn't bug me and it's out of sight/mind from the kids who like to press buttons.

[Arianwen1174]

With the recipe I use (here, but I cut the honey by about half) I save about 50 cents a loaf. I've found a couple very decent, reasonably-costing breads so my savings isn't as great as some people get. And it'll take a loooong time for my bread savings to make up for this (mine was $385). But because of my fibromyalgia, I can't really get by without it.

[mouso]

I do the no-knead bread book. Here's a link to an article that has the basic recipes for free and talks about the book.

A loaf of bread like that costs 3.99 or more around here, I make it for pennies and love it!

[ParisApril]

Originally Posted by luv-my-boys

This is my tried and true tortilla recipe just like my grandma makes. Im hispanic and "know" tortillas. I personally dont like store bought ones because they just dont taste right to me, probably all the perservatives.

flour tortilla recipe (1 dozen- stays about 1 week in fridge cooked/freezes fine)

3 C. unbleached Flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
4-6 tbsp vegetable shortening or lard
about 1 1/4 C warm water (NOT boiling)

mix dry ingred. in bowl. cut in shortening/lard until its crumbly. Slowly add the water so dough is soft (shouldnt be sticky). Knead dough for a few minutes. Seperate dough into 12 equal sized balls and let rest. This will cause the dough to get a little dry...you want that.

roll out each ball to a tortilla. Heat on a griddle or pan. It will only take a few seconds to cook on each side. Tortilla will have nice browned spots on them when that side is ready. DO not use a high heat, a small-medium heat will do.

** I use an iron griddle to heat them up but I have also used a larger chicken fryer type pan. These are super yummy with a dollop of butter. I also have a super yummy mexican rice recipe if anyone wants it.

Sounds yummy Could I sub whole wheat flour for the white?

[loraxc]

Yes, I was going to say that if you think bread takes too much time or haven't liked your results, you should try no-knead bread! I HAVE a breadmaker that I used to use constantly, and since I've started making no-knead bread I hardly use it all (I still occasionally make ww sandwich bread for my little toddler, since he finds the no-knead crust a bit chewy). The no-knead bread takes the same amoutn of time to mix up and the results are far superior to breadmaker bread, IMO. It does require advance planning and is a little less push-button, but I really think it's worth your time to try.

[Adamsmama]

Yes, I believe we save money this way ... but we don't eat bread all that often, anymore. we do eat a lot of baked goods (muffins, waffles, pizza dough and bagels ... and ww flour tortillas) that I make just about every day of the week and I know we save money on these items. I grind my own wheat and make more nutritious items for my family this way (I buy my wheat and yeast in bulk and always have enough on hand to make something!)