Is home made bread cheaper?

elantan

pinkmami wrote: »

Another annoying thing is the blade in the bottom of the loaf..........:mad:

I thought it was a great idea after the snow we had. "just in case" we got stuck with no bread....but I'll just prepare every week from November onwards. I'm lucky to have another freezer in the enpty cottage we have so when winter sets in (snow I mean) DH will walk there to check the sheep & he can bring down a few loaves from my stores!

i used to get the with my morphy richards machine but have never had it (touch wood) yet with my pannasonic ... a much better machine imho

santer_2

The blade embeds itself with small loaves only in my Panasonic

First loaves baked had crusts which touched the lid, probably 500g flour, so reduced the amount of flour, main advantages IMO are being able to bake whenever required, and at the size required

sunnyface

Kantankrus_Mare wrote: »

I quite fancy the idea of a breadmaker but the thing that puts me off is................................................................................................

how do you slice it to get a slice that isnt doorstep size?

Im sure there must be a gadget which I am unaware of?

I bought an electric knife too - it cost £17.95 - I need to work out how long, with the savings from breadmaking, it will take to pay for itself - probably about a month or so

sunnyface

Thanks for the recipes :beer:
Wish I hadn't looked at the Lakeland site - I now want a 'breadkeeper' - must.not.buy - plastic bags are just as good

Mrs_Chip

Thanks Swan for the seeded bread recipe - I will pass it to the OH who is IC the BM (sounds like a line from Dad's Army!).

Bread should not really be cut warm, but who can resist it? You need a good sharp knife and not too much pressure, the knife should do the work.

The crust on with the Lidl flour seems much crispier, but not sure if this is the flour or the fact that OH left last two loaves in machine for 30 mins after it was finished - I have asked him, in the interest of science, to take the next one out right away!

mmmsnow

Strangely enough, I did a costing today for a friend who was looking at getting a breadmaker.

The basic ingredients (for a basic, white loaf in our BM):

White bread flour 1.5kg is 68p and it makes 3 loaves so 23p for flour.
Butter is £1 for 250g and makes 10 loaves so 10p for butter.
Yeast (Doves Farm) is £1.19 for 125g and makes 50 loaves so 3p for yeast.
Salt (Saxo) is 41p for 750g so less than a penny for salt.
Sugar (granulated) is 55p for 500g so that's less than a penny for sugar.
Water is free because I'm Scottish

We'll say 40p for a basic loaf.

Adding whole wheat flour (a quarter of the weight of flour, bulking it up with white) would increase the cost to 44p. Using seeds and nuts (assuming Asda seed mix, £1.99 for 150g) would increase the cost again by 10p if using a couple of tablespoons for seeds for each loaf.

I would also recommend the Lakeland Slicing guide. It's saves money in the long run and it wears well - I've been using mine daily and it's still going strong after two years.

maganan

Hi Sunny,

I treated myself to a bread maker in February and havn't bought a loaf of bread since. We love it its much less salty than bought bread and I used to buy supermarket bakery bread not pre packed.

I tend to use allinsons seed and grain (£1/1kg) and hovis granary (£1.29/1kg) in a half and half mix - comes out as a lovely farmhouse loaf, so 2 bags gives me 4 loaves and a bit left over which I just combine in the next loaf. The yeast is 69p for 8 sachets which probably does around 20is loaves so the cost per loaf is approx 60p which is half what I was paying.

DS loves white toast so I also to an occassional white loaf but I just use [EMAIL="sm@rt"]sm@rt[/EMAIL] price plain at 52p/1.5kg which would work out at less than 25p per loaf and is on a par with supermarket bakery white loaves except I know exactly whats in mine!

Sorry costings are just off the top of my head

Sunny I've seen you over on the mutual support board and just wanted to say welcome the whole sites fab

Kate

mioliere

I've been making my own bread for about five years now, and I would never buy supermarket bread again. My BM stopped working about three months ago so I make it all by hand using organic ingredients - one of the most important aspects of making your own is that you know exactly what goes into it!

When I first started baking my own bread, someone on here pointed me in the direction of this http://www.allotment.org.uk/allotment_foods/bread-making/chorleywood-bread-process.php
and it just made me more determined to keep making it myself!

bblackcat

Absolutely cheaper!!!! Although if you have hungry teenagers in the house, the smell of the fresh bread tends to lure them into the kitchen and before you know it it is gone.

Ours can be put on an overnight setting so you wake up to fresh bread. I'd say the loaf stays fresh for about 2 days.

Ours also has two size settings - 1lb or 1.5lb loaves.

I buy Tesco own brand flour, yeast, oil, Value dried milk and salt & sugar. Def worth it.

I was suspicious at first and thought it would just be a phase, but I use it all the time and wouldn't be without it now.

Miss_Ratty

We bought a breadmaker a few years ago and gave it away as I was fed up of the blade issue and the fact that the bread was so tall I couldn't toast it properly. I now bake it by hand (but am buying a kenwood chef...which is not cheap, but I've wanted one for years and have been good and saved up for it). I had problems with yeasty bread, and it turns out it was too much yeast (sounds obvious, but I was just following the breadmaker recipe). I did a lovely loaf the other day - only 3 mins hand kneading (whoop - usually have to do 10 for hand baking)...and the plus is that there/s no milk powder or butter/oil required, so a cheap loaf indeed http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/bread/plain-and-simple-white-bread.html

Try a hand baked loaf...that will tell you if its the breadmaker or not. But its definitely cheaper, and far better for you (see the research on Chorleywood processed bread). Happy baking! x