Is homemade bread REALLY cheaper?

kippers

I use tesco's own white bread flour (my family won't eat wholemeal) and all value ingedients except for the stork marg i use. I get 12 good sized cobs which work loads cheaper than 12 horrible tasting cobs from the supermarket.

countingthepennies

I was wondering what you all think about the bread mixes you can buy. All you need to do is put water and the dry mix into the breadmaker, so you dont need to weigh out your own ingredients. I have been using these but after reading this thread I have looked at the ingredients and found that they contain flour treatment agents and emulsifiers. Its put me off a bit. What are your views?

Sagaris

I was using the bread mixes (bought a job lot when Asda had them on offer a month or so ago) and the results were ok in our Morphy Richards breadmaker. Then I thought I'd try the ingredients seperately - and the results are much better - the bread seems lighter and a better quality all round. I use Tesco own make flour too - nothing expensive here lol! And of course it works out much cheaper too.

The wholemeal bread is really nice - much better than anything you can buy I think - I really don't like shop bought wholemeal but prefer the home made variety to the white!

thriftlady_2

countingthepennies wrote: »

I was wondering what you all think about the bread mixes you can buy. All you need to do is put water and the dry mix into the breadmaker, so you dont need to weigh out your own ingredients. I have been using these but after reading this thread I have looked at the ingredients and found that they contain flour treatment agents and emulsifiers. Its put me off a bit. What are your views?

Never used them, my son has- at school when they were making bread in food technology (or cooking as I like to call it) -I was outraged that they didn't make it from scratch and even more outraged when I discovered that the teacher hadn't explained what ingredients actually went into the mix meaning none of the class know what you need in order to make bread.

I can't see the difficulty in weighing your own ingredients why rely on someone else to do such a simple thing for you- especially as these mixes are full of other weird ingredients. For me it's a no-brainer;)

jennet1

I have been using the hovis mixes and they are great, the only thing that makes HM bread more expensive is that is so tasty we just stand in the kitchen eating slice after slice of warm bread with butter and the loaf is gone within a day!!!, wheras a shop bought loaf lasts for around 3 days in our house

rachbc

GDB2222 wrote: »

It seems crazy, but i just can't get home-made bread to make any sense economically.

Strong wholemeal flour is around £1 per kilo, so a large loaf is around 70p. Add a bit for yeast, oil, electricity etc. Quite possibly 10 litres of water to wash up, so that's another 10p that goes unnoticed.

If I dare to add anything to the loaf, the cost goes through the roof - few herbs, sun dried tomatoes, olives, tomato paste etc., and I'm easily looking at a £2/£3 loaf.

Expensive business making your own bread!

I don't get it - Sun dried tomatoes 1.27 a jar in asda- how many are you adding for you loaf to cost 3 quid??

Bitsy_Beans

GDB2222 wrote: »

It seems crazy, but i just can't get home-made bread to make any sense economically.

Strong wholemeal flour is around £1 per kilo, so a large loaf is around 70p. Add a bit for yeast, oil, electricity etc. Quite possibly 10 litres of water to wash up, so that's another 10p that goes unnoticed.

If I dare to add anything to the loaf, the cost goes through the roof - few herbs, sun dried tomatoes, olives, tomato paste etc., and I'm easily looking at a £2/£3 loaf.

Expensive business making your own bread!

Have you actually considered that people might wash things ALL AT THE SAME TIME?
I don't run a bowl of hot water just for one item
Making your own bread isn't as expensive as you are making out but if you want something more than a basic white or wholemeal then sure the price is going to rise. The more you put in the higher the cost.....it's hardly rocket science :rotfl:

cardiff

can you freeze the dough? or is it better to make the bread and then freeze it? just wondered as I have very limited freezer space but if I could freeze the dough it wouldn't take up as much room, then bake the bread as and when and make sure I eat it before it goes off (which won't be a problem!)

thank you

princesstippytoes

thriftlady wrote:

I can't see the difficulty in weighing your own ingredients why rely on someone else to do such a simple thing for you- especially as these mixes are full of other weird ingredients. For me it's a no-brainer;)

It might be a no-brainer for you but for me bread mixes were an introduction to making my own bread and without them I don't think I would ever have had the courage to try making my own bread. The word yeast terrified me because I didn't understand how it worked and even though everybody on the os board said breadmakers were easy to use I feared they may not be for me. The mixes gave me confidence in my own ability to make bread and after a while I began to try recipes using ingredients from scratch including the dreaded yeast word. Now I make all my own bread by hand and I'm not afraid to substitute ingredients and play about with salt and sugar amounts. IMHO bread mixes can be a great thing introducing bread making to the uninitiated.

p00

I make my own fruit bread and banana bread, plus rolls but today Asda was selling off Hovis at 30p a loaf so I filled the freezer as that is cheaper than making it.

xxp00