Lately, I have been on this baking kick....I don't mean opening a box and making a cake kind of baking...but gather all the ingredients and do it from scratch.
I guess it started with THIS post. For Carson's birthday I made him a cake from scratch. I "think" that was the start of this madness...but honestly, I think it has to do with me being frugal....I cannot stand to pay full price for anything! Simple right? I will shop around until I find the best price on anything...from a loaf of bread, to clothing. I clip coupons... will shop in bulk, and stock up. I am even toying with the idea of making my own laundry soap after seeing a FRIEND make her own on her blog.
So when I discovered that my frugalness,(is that a word?)...was sometimes causing me stress, because I really want to pinch pennies, but not skimp on quality, I decided to look into doing more back to basic cooking. I have never been one to make much from the box type stuff....you know hamburger helper etc. I prefer to feed something that isn't filled with preservatives and was basically just crap. Another reason that this is important to me is that when we decided to pull all red dyes out of Carson's diet, I was stupified to find red dye in things such as Pillsbury refrigerated dough???? Why would this be a necessary ingredient in dough?
So look at it like this. I was buying at Wal Mart a loaf of the lower priced bread. One loaf was costing $2.39. A bag of flour was $2.07. Yeast is $1.06 for three pks. Our family can easily go through 2-3 loaves of bread a week, so that was roughly $7.00 per week on bread. Since baking my own, I get two loaves each baking, that roughly cost me $1.47 for two! I can get approximately 5 loaves of bread per bag of flour. Imagine what I can do if I buy in BULK!
I always thought that it would take too much time to make bread from scratch.... not so much actually. From start to finish it is about 3 hours. but 2.5 hours of that is rising time, and clean up. I can do other stuff while my bread is rising.....plus the house smells soooooooo good.
If you are wondering I got the recipe from HERE . It is a very versatile and forgiving recipe. I have made it four times, and each time I make it, it comes out better than the last time. it freezes real well and, I love being able to give my neighbor a loaf every now and then too!
5 comments:
If you don't have a bread-making machine, you should ask Santa for one. When I stayed home (eons ago), my parents gave me one and it was great. Who knows where it is now that I've moved twice.
Funny thing Anita, my Mother-in-Law gave me one for Christmas a year or two before she passed away. I like it too... but I really like kneading the dough etc. Kinda like clay...only you can eat it... weird I know!
If your not going to use my mom's bread machine that she got us for Christmas then let's sell it and use the proceeds to buy you flour and yeast...lol
I'll send you a few recipes for the different breads I used to make, from the crusty french baguettes to the quick and easy Irish soda bread. Baking is in your genes! I know you used to help your old dad knead (we used the dough hook on the mixer) and you helped butter the hot slices...
I am a CTMH sister!!! I love baking bread! Looks really good!!
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