Make your own bread

Hello all!

Well, today marked my first adventure in making my own bread. I must say, I was very pleased with the results. Typically, as I explained in my first post, bread sold by stores is full of preservatives and chemicals, and mostly air, to make it look good and last long. Most bread also has High Fructose Corn syrup, which a doctor friend of mine says is the devil (she admits she's a little kooky about it, but I trust her, she's one smart gal...) ;) so the homemade stuff is so much better for you.

I plan as time goes on to experiment with different types of flour and so on, and I will make sure to blog about those attempts. I'll also add photos once I figure out how. But for now, I'll give you the recipe I used and my thoughts. This is very basic white bread, no frills.

First though I'll give you a cost breakdown. I sat down with my receipts from the grocery and figured out the unit cost on each ingredient. Some ingredients had an almost negligible unit cost, so I made those items one cent in my calculations. So it is in some ways a slight estimate that probably actually runs a smidge high, but I find it helpful regardless. So here are a list of the ingredients I used and the unit prices. Figuring unit price is fairly easy, and if you need to convert volumes or weights, there are literally hundreds of calculators online to do this for you, just google what you want to convert.

So here is the very short list of ingredients you need, all of these items were purchased at Aldi's

1/4 cup milk.... $.04
5 Tsp. Sugar.... $.05
1 Tsp. Salt... $.01
5 Tsp (1.5 Tbsp) Butter... $..09
1 package active dry yeast...$.26
Approx. 3 cups flour... $.27
Nonstick Cooking spray...$.01

Total: $.73 cents for one loaf. Most store-bought bread is anywhere from $1.70-$2.50!!

For equipment you'll need

A large mixing bowl
a spoon
a 1/2 or 1/4 cup measuring cup
a tsp measuring spoon
a bread pan (I found silicone ones at Aldi for $2.99)
and a hand towel to cover the bread while it rises.

So first you warm up your bowl by filling it with hot water then dumping it out. Prepare the yeast according to the package, usually a cup of warm water mixed with the yeast. Stir this up till it's a bubbly, tan looking water with no lumps.

Melt your butter in the microwave and add it, along with the salt, sugar and milk and combine well.

Next add two cups of flour and start stirring. Add more flour 1/4 cup at a time until it's all incorporated and you have a slightly sticky dough. I only needed to add another 1/2 cup to the original 2 cups.

Next, flour your work surface and knead the dough for about ten minutes. Push/pull and beat the crap out of it. It's a great stress reliever and you'll get good arm muscles from doing it enough :)

Clean your bowl, spray with cooking spray and form your dough into a ball. Place dough in the bowl, cover with towel, and put in the oven (not turned on) for an hour. The dough should rise to twice it's normal size.

Take the dough out and punch it flat on your work surface (still liberally coated in flour) and roll your dough into a long rectangle, with the width being as long as your bread pan. Roll this up, tuck the ends under and put in a lightly greased bread pan. Cover again with the towel and put back in the oven (not on still) for another hour. After that hour, bake your bread at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.

That's it! It's really good, the crust nice and hard but the inside soft. Slice it up nice and thin and you get just about as much as you would from a store-bought loaf. Only make what you know you'll use, and wrap it up well.

So no, it won't  last as long as the stuff you buy from the store, but the taste and quality are so much better and you have the satisfaction of knowing you made it yourself and the savings really adds up over time! :)

That's all for tonight, Cornish Pasty post tomorrow or Sunday!

Eat well!

Dawn

Introducing Save Money and Eat well.

Hello readers!

Well, after a conversation with a cousin of mine, when we were talking about swapping money saving recipes and ideas on facebook, the idea for this blog was born. Saving money is something that is on everyone's mind these days, what with the economy and all. So I thought, why not start a blog dedicated to that sort of thing. Who knows how many people will ever read it, but I'll be happy to share my ideas with anyone willing to listen.

Most of my recipes I find online, so many of these won't be original recipes. I do tweak things from time to time, either to make it vegetarian for my husband, or change taste and texture to my liking.

I became a stay-at-home Mom again, after several years back in the workforce. All three of my girls are in school, so that leaves me some time on my hands during the week to do some of the more labor/time intensive stuff. But with proper planning, a lot of things can be made ahead over the weekend, to use during the week. So really anyone, regardless of situation/time management issues, should be able to use these tips and tricks. All it takes is a little planning.

I will also, on recipes, try to post info on where I bought and what I paid for ingredients. Obviously, prices where you are may be a little different, and feel free to comment if you need help working out the unit cost of something, but I have found that I spend a lot more on groceries when I don't pay a great deal of attention to the prices. A little work and planning is all it takes. It may seem like a lot of work at first, but trust me, just like keeping a food journal is essential to losing weight, keeping a log of what your food costs, is important to saving money when you're cooking.

Another amazing thing I'm learning is how much cheaper it is to make things from scratch than it is to buy pre-made, pre-packaged stuff. Many people say they can't afford to eat foods made with fresh ingredients, but it really is cheaper. Some things I do buy canned, like diced tomatoes or chick peas and beans because I don't like cooking dried beans. But buying fresh vegetables, as long as you use them right away (again planning is key) can save you a ton of money, especially when things are in season.

It's also a lot healthier to make things from scratch, because you know just what is going into it, unlike pre-made things, which are full of preservatives (the main one being sodium) and all sorts of dyes and chemicals that we can't pronounce. And I have come to believe these things can't possibly be good for us. So that is another advantage to cooking as cleanly as possible.

I'm only just starting out with all this so I hope whoever reads this finds it helpful and I am always open to suggestions if anyone has a better idea about something than I have. Goodness knows I don't know everything.

So lets enjoy this journey together and save money too!

Eat well!

Dawn