Bread Baking

Thanks to my sister-in-law who gave me a fantastic (and easy) recipe for bread, I have seriously considered making bread from scratch on a weekly (although realistically, more like twice-a-week...ly...) basis. The recipe is fast (a huge plus for the mother of a toddler), easy (a huge plus for those of us with a history of turning out hard, round lumps that make better doorstops than dinner food) and it tastes fantastic. Another plus is that you can make white bread or wheat bread. Same recipe, more healthy.

So in considering this I decided to do some actual math, because sometimes the "homemade" way is actually just harder and not all that much better for you or your pocket. Now, I'm not going to show you the math (for several reasons, not least of which is I'm not very good at math and I might be off by a cent... or two...), but the final tallies came out thusly:

White bread: .76¢
Wheat bread: $1.36

Wow! The bread we buy (and only on sale) is still twice that at $2.98. Plus each batch of this heavenly stuff makes two huge loaves! Ok, not that huge, we had two today and between my father-in-law, mother-in-law, brother-in-law, husband, child and, oh yeah, me there are about two slices left. No lie. That's it. 

And you know what else? I enjoy making it. I like baking and it smells amazing in my house all day long.

Lesson today: Make bread at home, not only is it fantastic, cheaper and not as daunting as it might seem, it makes you very popular with the in-laws!

Photo bombing brother-in-law. Told you. Popular with the in-laws!