does bread maker save u $$?

[wbh1964]

Just curious of those of you that have bread machines...do they save you money on purchasing loaf sandwich bread? We pay about $2/week on a loaf of white wheat bread each week and just curious if it would be cheaper to purchase a used machine and make it myself??? any thoughts???

 

[KibbyCat]

Just curious of those of you that have bread machines...do they save you money on purchasing loaf sandwich bread? We pay about $2/week on a loaf of white wheat bread each week and just curious if it would be cheaper to purchase a used machine and make it myself??? any thoughts???

I don't use a bread machine, but save $$ by buying my bread at a local bakery outlet. The "day-old" bread is less than half what it costs in the grocery stores, and they have a frequent buyer program that allows me a free loaf each time I have spent $20 (a punch card keeps track for me). They even sell "fresh" loaves for less than the grocery store charges. If I were you, I'd check in your area to see if there is a Wonder bread outlet, or other brand, nearby.

 

[dis-happy]

It's saving me a fortune! We're a larger family and I make a loaf every other day. A little over a year ago I noticed that bread was going for $3. a loaf and decided to dust off my breadmaker.

I buy the 50 lb. bag of bread flour at Costco for around $12. It lasts about 9 months. The recipe I use calls for 3 cups of flour per loaf. I prefer a whole wheat blend, so I usually use 2 cups of the bread flour and 1 cup of whole wheat King Arthur flour (purchased at Wal-Mart for best price). My family loves the bread machine bread better than any store bought---it comes out so good! I also buy bulk yeast at BJ's and measure out 2.5 tsp per loaf. I think the bulk yeast was about $4. and a bag lasts the whole year as well. I keep it in the fridge in a tuppereware container.

Anyway, your biggest cost will be the machine itself. Try to get one as cheaply as possible. They were all the rage 10+ years ago and a lot of people have them stashed. See if a family member has one you could try or maybe find one at a yardsale or CL. Mine is a Breadman and it does everything for me---so easy and so good. I also use the dough setting to make pizza dough and the dough for pita bread.

recipe I found online:
1 warm cup water
3 Tbls sugar
2.5 tsp. yeast
(let sit for 5 mins to proof--tastes better)

add:
3 cups bread flour (or a combination w/ whole wheat)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (I use canola)
1 tsp salt

set machine to 1.5 pound loaf, white bread or wheat bread setting


If not making the bread right away, (ie. setting machine timer the night before to have hot bread ready in the morning), you have to add the ingredients differently:

water, oil, salt, sugar goes in first
then flour pile up in the middle
then yeast added to an indentation in the flour

also, on my machine, I find it works best if the 1 cup of water is a little bit above the 1 cup line on the measure cup, ends up being an extra 1-2 Tbls.

GL!!! Hope you get one, they are so easy peasy and the bread is so yummy!

 

[dex08]

We've never calculated whether it saves us money or not but I do find that DH tends to eat more bread when I make it homemade vs. store bought. It's just the two of us, so oftentimes a loaf of store bought bread would go bad before we ate it all.

I use a variation of dis-happy's recipe above. Instead of 3 Tablespoons of sugar we use 3 T of honey and also we use 1.5 cups King Arthur bread flour with 1.5 cups of King Arthur whole wheat flour.

We buy our yeast in bulk at Costco and keep it in the freezer, but a small jar full in the fridge that we scoop from. It's an old Fleischman's yeast jar. I have yet to figure out where I'd store a giant Costco bag of bread flour so we don't buy that. If I knew what to do with it to keep it fresh, then I'd surely buy bread flour in bulk.

 

[msmama]

If you don't buy things in bulk, I'd say it's pretty even cost wise, actually.

But the homemade bread tastes SO much better. And I make ALL bread now, sandwich loaves, baguettes, even rolls and hamburger/hotdog buns.

Last month I went through 1 5 lb bag of bread flour, about 2/3 a bag of Whole wheat flour (I do the same as a pp and mix them) and a jar of yeast.

1 1/4 c water
3 c flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast

(makes 1 1/2 lb loaf)

 

[dntd]

I find it saves me alot of money. I actually have 2,both are black and decker and both were under $50. One is better the the other because of the shape but the kids don't care. I recently splerged on a counter top slicer and the bread looks and tastes like bakery bread. I have 5 kids so we can go through 1-2 loafs a day!

 

[Happy Mom2]

I had a bread machine but we never used it so DH sold it on craigslist. We bake our own bread without a bread machine. DH is mixes the dough, forms the loaf, lets it rise and pops it in the oven for 20 minutes... YUMMY!

 

[L107ANGEL]

I had a bread machine but we never used it so DH sold it on craigslist. We bake our own bread without a bread machine. DH is mixes the dough, forms the loaf, lets it rise and pops it in the oven for 20 minutes... YUMMY!

Recipe please

 

[Josh Hendy]

I used my bread machine off and on for a year or two and then gave it away. I started making bread by hand. Well, not entirely by hand but with a heavy-duty electric mixer using the dough hook and then a couple minutes of hand kneading.

I've tried dozens of recipes, but one of the best that I've found is "Pain a l'ancien" in the Peter Reinhart book The Bread Maker's Apprentice. Except for the fact that you have to plan ahead and make the dough the night before baking, it's incredibly easy and requires a minimum amount of kneading and no special rolling and folding techniques to form the baguettes - you just chop the dough into pieces and stretch each piece into a long loaf, then slash the tops and bake in a metal pan. This recipe makes a very sweet-tasting French baguette (which actually uses zero sugar, just bread flour, water, yeast, salt). Reinhart has another book on making whole-grain breads, which also taste pretty good. He has a ton of different variations using every combination of grain imaginable.

Kneading is not so bad, but some people don't like it because they don't have the arm strength or they dislike getting their hands sticky. But if you have a good electric mixer with a dough hook then it practically eliminates kneading. If you search for "no-knead bread" there are a lot of recipes and books out there which you don't knead at all, just mix thoroughly.

Another trick which eliminates a lot of the kneading is to knead for a few minutes, then cover the dough with a bowl and let it sit for 5-10 minutes. During this time the gluten absorbs water so that when you pick up the dough again it gets that silky, springy feeling after only a minute or two of kneading. If you knead continuously for 10-15 minutes then the same thing will happen, but why bust your tail when the gluten will absorb the water anyways if you leave it alone? If you watch your bread machine I think you will see that it always includes this resting step.

A nice partly whole wheat recipe that my family really likes is "Honey Wheat Bushman Bread" which is a clone from topsecretrecipes.com of the rolls that Outback Steakhouse serves.

 

[dis2cruise]

Sorry a little off topic here but if I was going to make bread without the bread machine how warm should the liquids be to be mixed with the yeast?

 

[dis-happy]

Sorry a little off topic here but if I was going to make bread without the bread machine how warm should the liquids be to be mixed with the yeast?

Warm, but not hot or it will kill the yeast. I get 8 oz. directly out of the Keurig, add the sugar to dissolve, and let it sit for 5 mins. before adding the yeast. You can do a fingertip test pretty easily if you want. GL!

 

[SandrA9810]

I like using my bread machine for making the dough. Then after it rises, I take it out and bake it in the oven. Now the one thing that does turn out great in the bread machine is cake. The mixing cycle on it takes a lot longer than doing it by hand or with a stand mixer, but I like that it all mixes and bakes in the same pan, which is much easier for cleaning.

I don't know if it's cost saving, but I like to do it. I still buy Oroweat bread at about $3 a loaf, but not very often.

At Christmas time, I stocked up on about 5 bags of flour because Target had a pretty good sale going on. Bread flour and all purpose were about a $1.50 each, but the cheapest I've found for whole wheat is like $3-4.

 

[Leader of the Club]

I like using my bread machine for making the dough. Then after it rises, I take it out and bake it in the oven.

That's what I do, too.

I would rather bake the bread for the fam that way I know what is in it. We try to go HFCS free as much as possible and store-bought bread is usually loaded.

I usually bake a Cottage Cheese bread for our white bread. It adds lots of extra goodies to the bread like calcium and protein. You can google a recipe.

Oh, I figure it costs about .75 a loaf for us and I get two loaves per baking.

 

[flamingglobessigmund]

I have a Sunbeam bread machine that cost about $55. I've had it for 3 years. It does save us money on bread, pizza dough, rolls. I've got yeast in a jar in the fridge. The date it expired was Feb 2010 but it still works.

I love the bread machine because all I do is put the ingredients in, set the menu and start it up. It does all the work. For making dough it's great too.

I store the whole wheat and corn meal flours in the freezer.

 

[SandrA9810]

That's what I do, too.

I would rather bake the bread for the fam that way I know what is in it. We try to go HFCS free as much as possible and store-bought bread is usually loaded.

I usually bake a Cottage Cheese bread for our white bread. It adds lots of extra goodies to the bread like calcium and protein. You can google a recipe.

Oh, I figure it costs about .75 a loaf for us and I get two loaves per baking.

Ohh that sounds interesting, does it still taste the same as white bread?? I'm trying to find inventive ways to add good stuff to our meals without changing the taste too much. I've never been the fan of cottage cheese, but I wouldn't using it.

Oroweat is the only brand that I've found to be healthy without HFCS, but I buy it as a treat since it's $3 a loaf.

 

[squirrel]

I also make my own bread every week using the Bread Machine to make the dough. If I didn't already have the bread machine, I would get a good mixer with the dough hook.

I make a whole wheat loaf:

1 cup + 2 Tbsp Water or Milk
2 Tbsp Oil
2 Tbsp Molasses
1 Egg
2/3 cup Oats or 7 Grain Cereal
1 tsp Salt
3 cups Whole Wheat Flour
2 tsp Yeast

You can also add in some Flax seed or sesame seeds. I warm the water/milk in the microwave for about 45 sec.

I don't buy Bread Flour, I use the regular flour.

 

[KigerKat]

It's just the two of us, so oftentimes a loaf of store bought bread would go bad before we ate it all.

I've been looking into a bread machine for this exact reason. I really wish stores would sell smaller loaves of bread, but they don't. We only use bread when we have sandwiches, which is not that often. I'll occasionally have toast if I have eggs for breakfast, but that's not that often, either. I would hate to see how much money we have wasted on bread alone.

I was at Kohl's today, and saw that they had 2 models on sale. One was a Food Network brand for $50 and the other was a Breadman for about $130. I'm hinting to DH that I would like one for my birthday in July!!

 

[tonilea]

We don't use ours often, I don't like the big hole in the bottom, so I usually just make it by hand - well, with a stand mixer. Anyway, I was thinking about using it this summer. Just mix up my bread like normal, then bake it in the breadmaker sans the little mixer paddle. I could put it out on the back porch and then it wouldn't be heating the house up, like the oven does.

 

[fakereadhed]

I think the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day is easier than the breadmaker, and cheaper. Ingredients for basic recipe: water, yeast, salt, flour. I mix a big batch in my Kitchenaid with the dough hook and refrigerate it. The next day I pull out enough for a loaf, shape it, throw it in a bread pan and score the top. I let it rise on the counter until 40 min before dinnerand bake at 350. The batch makes 6 loaves with no kneading or fuss!

http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?page_id=63

 

[disneymarie]

I did not pay more then $39 for my bread machine 10 years ago and have used it hard. But not steady.

I always use it for Banana bread when they turn,

I make my dough for homemade pirogies with it.

I mix dough for rolls in my iron skillet.

And everyone loves the taste of homemade bread at home.

It is storing it that is the issue. Right now it sits up on the microwave cabinet. I am short on storage places though. We have a large family.

I also agree with making bread, then buy in bulk.