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Recently, a reader sent me the following email:
I love the fact that you bake most of your breads and have tried to start doing that more often, but my question is this: How much does it save you to bake all of your breads, rolls, buns, english muffins, etc. especially when you can get them at ALDI for next to nothing? Have you ever figured it up to see the savings or do you do it more for the healthy part of it? Just curious! Thanks! -Sara
Sara is not the only reader who has wondered this, and I've never even sat down to figure out the nitty-gritty price details either. So, I thought a Wednesday Baking post devoted to this topic would be good for me and for you!
First off, I should say that in my mind, homemade bread is more about eating really good, really fresh bread than it is about saving money. I could probably buy uber-cheap bread at the store and save some money over homemade, but I infinitely prefer the experience of eating homemade bread, especially when it's warm from the oven. You really can't buy bread like that from the store. There is some pretty good bakery bread out there, yes, but I'm pretty sure that buying truly good bread would cost me way more than it costs me to make truly good bread.
Though not every bread I bake is healthy, I do bake partly because I can control what goes into my breads. I never have to worry about what preservatives are in my bread or whether or not there's high-fructose corn syrup in the ingredients. I never have to worry about finding hydrogenated oils or soy products in our breads. I can use freshly ground whole grain flours when I bake (though I don't do that all the time!), and you can't get that at a bakery.
Even when it comes to the more indulgent breads I make such as Cinnamon Crisps or Overnight Cinnamon Rolls, I still think what I make is better than what you can buy at the store. I use butter, not hydrogenated butter substitutes. I use real ingredients in my frostings (no stabilizers or fillers ... just butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla). I use local eggs, and I use unbleached flour.
I know about all the ingredients in our breads, and that makes me happy. Nothing unpronounceable or unrecognizable goes into what I bake. (Michael Pollan would be proud!) I also like to bake my own bread because I can make whatever variety I want. I don't have to search the local stores for cardamom bread ... I can just bake my own. I don't have to try to find a bakery that makes Cinnamon Crisps because I can make my own.
Okay, but what about the cost? To do an Amy Dacyzyn-like comparison, I bought a loaf of super cheap white bread from Weis. It's a one-pound loaf and it cost $.99.
Here's the ingredient list:
Basically, this bread consists of flour, water, high fructose corn syrup, yeast, oil, salt, gluten, and a bunch of preservatives that I am too lazy to type out. However, I am very certain that this bread fails Michael Pollan's real food test if only because it contains azodicarbonamide. (It's hard to pronounce and I don't know what it is!). My sandwich bread recipe is probably the most similar to this type of bread, although my recipe calls for milk instead of water.
I'll go through the ingredient list and do a price breakdown so that we can figure out what's cheaper ... store bought or homemade.
5 3/4-6 1/4 cups all-purpose flour: I often get my flour for $.99/5 lb bag. However, let's assume that you're paying $2.50 for that bag. That means each cup of flour costs $0.125. So, six cups of flour costs $0.75.
1 pkg (2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast: I buy my yeast in bulk, which is the only way to go if you want to save money by baking. Yeast in packets is way, way, too expensive.
