how much do you save baking bread instead of buying?

[ccasanova]

We have been buying bread at Costco and get the Kirkland Sig. brand of whole wheat bread. I don't know if they have more than 1 kind but we get the one that is truly whole wheat, not the 'fake' whole wheat bread. It is not the organic one however. It costs us $4 for almost 3 pounds of bread.

So my question is, will the savings of baking ones own bread really be worth the savings? About how much does it cost to bake a loaf of bread? When you factor in all the ingredients and energy it costs to run the oven?

One thing that would be beneficial for our family is that I would be able to make bread that my son would like more and be more willing to eat. He does not like the Costco bread because of all the whole pieces of grain sprinkled throughout. Also, I would be able to make half wheat/half white bread for DH which would be a step in the right direction from eating the pure white bread that he eats now.

So is it worth it cost wise?

[Jilian]

I think that it really depends on what kind of bread you are baking. Some breads have few ingredients while others have tons. For example my recipie for multigrain bread has like 15+ ingredients so I haven't tried it yet. I did however buy ingredients for raisin bread in bulk and that definately saved me money. But it does take a while to make some breads. Especially yeast breads that require double rises. There is always a bread machine to minimize your work time.

I mainly make my own bread because I like the satisfaction of knowing that I made it and I know everything that went into it. DH loves kneading and beating the dough down after it rises

[ekortering]

I bake bread in a bread machine that I bought at the thrift store for $7 (included the manual ). I have 2 or 3 simple recipes that I rotate through for variety. I bought all the ingredients in bulk from the Amish grocery store. My best guess is that each loaf costs me less then $1.00. I used to be able to buy good bread at the Bread Outlet for 50-75 cents per loaf but not anymore. Now it's up to $1.75 per loaf. Yikes!

[VisionaryMom]

I make the basics - French, Italian, white, wheat - mostly. I calculated once (about 2 years ago), and it was $0.73/loaf. If you make more complicated breads, that's obviously going to go up. The biggest thing, though, is that you have to eat it quickly or freeze the dough (which I've never quite gotten to work).

[janerose]

Quite a bit. The prices at our bread outlet store have doubled. A loaf of whole wheat "fake" bread costs $1.79 even there. Artisan style bread at the grocery bakery runs between $3-$4 per loaf.

I can make a loaf of bread for 1# of flour, plus a few cents worth of yeast & salt. I make it in a lidded enameled cast iron pot or dutch oven in the stove. A loaf runs us anywhere from .50 cents to $1.50 (depending what type of flour I'm using, if I make a "special" bread with extra stuff in it, etc).

Yes, I do have to turn on the oven, but I've been trying to plan it out so that I cook whatever else needs to be done right before or after the bread. Like so far this week after finishing the bread one day I made a chocolate cake from scratch & another day I did baked chicken.

[janerose]

Originally Posted by BrandiRhoades

I make the basics - French, Italian, white, wheat - mostly. I calculated once (about 2 years ago), and it was $0.73/loaf. If you make more complicated breads, that's obviously going to go up. The biggest thing, though, is that you have to eat it quickly or freeze the dough (which I've never quite gotten to work).

I've had good luck freezing our dough. The bread came out *slightly* flatter, but not flat by any means & the taste/texture were the same.

We make a No Knead bread recipe we found at Mother Earth News here:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-...ad.aspx?page=2

I have also made it 1/2 white, 1/2 wheat & it comes out excellent.

What we do is mix it up & let it have the inital 8-12 hr rise overnight. Then we do the step where we fold it twice, but instead of setting it aside at that point to rise the 2nd time I freeze the dough. Then, when you take it out the defrosting process replaces the second rise. Once it's thawed I follow the recipe from that point on.

Next time I am going to try thawing the dough & letting it sit for an extra hour or two as well to see if that will help with the slight loss of loft. Otherwise we've been *more* than happy with this recipe. It is the only one we've found so far that truly does come out like the bread at the bakery!

[tboroson]

In my experience, baking bread is for satisfaction and novelty, not economy. Currently I buy sprouted spelt bread for about $6/ 1 lb. loaf. A pound of sprouted spelt flour also costs me about $6, so I really can't make it any cheaper. I could buy non-organic wheat flour (except dd2 and I react to it) and make a loaf far cheaper... but then there's a bread outlet where I could buy week old loaves 3/$1, which would be even cheaper. At that outlet, I could buy fresher loaves for about $1 a loaf - maybe a few cents more than I could bake it for, but not much. At two loaves a week tops, it's hardly worth the aggravation.

Now, if I had a grain mill, I could buy whole grain spelt and sprout it myself, and spend a heck of a lot less than $6 a pound. Then I might bake a *lot* more. But a decent mill is a small fortune in and of itself.

[OkiMom]

I don't know about the states but over here Ive been saving money making my own bread and bread items (like rolls, pizza crust etc). Heres what Ive spent:
Bread maker: got used for 20.00
Flour: Got 4 bags of Whole wheat flour for 1.00 per on sale. 4.00
Yeast: 2.50 (had a coupon)
Sugar: Im not sure how much Ive used on bread but Ill go large and say I spent 2.00
Oil: again going large and saying 2.00
Salt: not sure again Im saying maybe .50
So total that would be 31.00. So far Ive made two pizza crusts (which over here are 5.00 each and the ones I made were a lot large), 6 loaves of bread (over here whole wheat bread is 3.00 a loaf and doesnt' go on sale) and about 2 dozen rolls (2.00 for 6 over here). So adding that up I would have spent 36.00 and I still have two unopen bags of flour and more than half a thing of yeast left. So I probably will pay for my bread maker within a month of buying it.
Now if I was back in the states I could get bread for a lot cheaper.

[Poddi]

I almost never bake plain bread, always the "fancier" stuff so I can't really compare. I'm sure if I want to buy a loaf of organic multigrain bread with blackstrap molasses it would be way too much. And many of them come with flax seeds and I can't eat flax, so by making my own I can put in exactly what I want to eat. I suspect that if I just want to bake plain white bread and slice them for sandwiches, Costco would be a bit cheaper.

[holidaymama]

For us, I figure its about:

$3/5 lb of Whole Wheat Flour
$3/5 lb of white flour (that's over estimating)
$4 something for a large jar of yeast
$4 for a large container of honey
pennies for the salt
$4 1 lb of gluten flour

so that would be let's just say $20...

And I easily get 20 loaves out of it if not more.

And...most importantly it's healthy.

The bread I was buying was just the store 100% whole wheat and it was 2.50-2.60 a loaf. So I am deffinitely saving.

[velochic]

It saves me money when I'm making, for example, biscuits, yeast rolls, french bread, brioche. We eat these fairly regularly and I use 1/2 white 1/2 whole wheat, sometimes ground at home. I can make whole wheat sandwich bread, but we don't enjoy it (it has no taste, IMO). I simply don't have the ability to make the sandwich bread we eat. It's 12 grain (all-natural, but not organic) and I am not an accomplished enough baker to feel it is worth the money to tinker with that many grains to perfect our sandwich bread. I'd probably spend $100 in ingredients just figuring out how to make it. I'm not a great baker.

[llamalluv]

Baking bread gives a low hourly wage in terms of savings, but I enjoy it, and we like the taste. Depending on what you make and what your prices for ingredients and energy are, your savings may be different.

[meowee]

I depends on what bread you buy and what bread you bake. I can make a loaf of artisan white flour bread for very little-- only ingredients are flour, yeast, salt, water. I buy my yeast in bulk from King Arthur. I buy the non-organic unbleached flour at the store. Most energy charts I've looked at say a gas oven costs about 10 cents for an hour of use.

So, 3 cups flour = 53 cents
water = negligible
yeast = negligible (a $5 package lasts me months)
salt = negligible
gas = 10 cents

So you're looking at a nice crusty loaf of bread for under a dollar. Same loaf at the store would be $4-$6.

Whole wheat isn't much more, though I use oil and sugar in my WW bread.

[wannabe]

I'd be interested to see how much power a bread machine uses. It seems like it would be a lot. Anyone know?