A 5 pound bag of organic flour can lead to many adventures, and bread making is a great choice.
Have you ever thought about how many loaves one can make with a bag? Or if you are saving money versus buying bread made? I recently made up jars of my favorite bread machine recipe, to calculate the cost. A good loaf of bread is $4-6 a loaf in stores. You might get as low as $3.50, but that is pushing it. This is saying you buy a brand that is decent in ingredients, and doesn’t have a 3 week shelf life! (Let’s not even get into that. My kids won’t finish a loaf of commercial bread. Once you quit eating commercial bread, when you walk into the grocery store, into the bread aisle, you notice the odd smell that comes from the bread.)
A bag of Bob’s Red Mill organic white flour is $7.99 retail, however I often find it on sale for as low as $2.99, meaning I can get it for less than a bag of regular flour. If one is watching grocery costs, Trader Joe’s sells an excellent flour for $4 a bag.
I found I could make up 4 batches of bread with a 5 pound bag.
Even at full cost, that is $2 per loaf worth of flour. If I buy Trader Joe’s flour, it is $1 per loaf. Depending on your recipe, the other items are very inexpensive. My recipe uses:
- water
- olive oil
- granulated sugar
- sea salt
- all-purpose flour
- dry milk
- yeast
Since I buy in larger sizes and store the ingredients in mason jars, in our pantry, the cost I spends on a loaf is under $2. Once my bread is cooled, I slice it up and stash it in the freezer for lunches, taking out what I need the night before, and thawing in the refrigerator. And because I use a bread machine, my on hand time is very low.
Is it worth it? Do I save money? Yes! Do I get a much higher quality bread? Yes! But most of all, my bread has a clean ingredient list, and I don’t have to worry about allergy cross contamination for my youngest.