Just thought I would check

I have been making bread since we moved back into our new kitchen.  The only bread I have bought from the store has been the occasional baguette.  I like making bread because I know what's in it and nothing tastes like homemade bread fresh from the oven.  But I was also operating under the assumption that baking bread was saving me money.  I finally decided that I should check it out.  So, ala Squawkfox I decided to do the math.  And I'm mostly right.

The kind of bread that I usually buy, the artisan bread from the bakery costs $1.34 more per loaf than my price per homemade loaf.  This doesn't include the impact of the cost of electricity to bake the loaves but my prices assume that nothing is on sale and I'm buying name brands.  The house brand of whole wheat flour at Longo's for example is almost $2 cheaper than the name brand version.


Homemade cost
Yeast                       0.94
Buttermilk               1.12
Honey                     1.08
Canola oil                0.32
Whole Wheat flour  1.22
Bread flour               1.62
cost for 2 loaves       6.30

for 1 loaf                   3.15

Grocery store cost                                                     Savings/cost
Artisan bread from Longo's bakery            4.49 -1.34
Artisan pre-packaged bread                        3.39 -0.24
Pre-packaged sliced bread                          2.99            0.16

So, in addition to really, really liking homemade bread, I feel even better for having confirmed that the price is right too.

Apologies for the funny alignment of the numbers.  I can't figure out how to cleanly copy tables into the blog.