My youngest daughter (5 years old) loves to bake and one of our favorite things to bake on Sundays is fresh baked bread.  Now I doubt there are not too many people that could argue that fresh baked bread/rolls from your oven beats store bought bread, though I was curious if I am actually saving money baking it myself.  For now I am going to tackle the cost comparison of bread dough and cover the actual cost of baking in the next post.

The cost of materials completely depends on the recipe being made, so here is the one I am working with:

Simple White Bread Dough Recipe

• 4 cups warm water
• 1 1/3 cup white sugar
• 3 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons of active yeast
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 12 cups of flour

Directions:

• Dissolve sugar in warm water, followed by yeast in power mixer.  Allow to proof until contents looks like some light brown cream foam. 
• Add salt and oil and 6 cups of flour one cup of a time. 
• Switch to hook attachment and add flour until dough does not stick to your finger when you touch it. 
• Cover with damp cloth and allow to rise until it doubles in size. 
• Punch down bread dough and divide into fourths and place into well oiled 9X5 inch loaf pans allowing to rise for 30 minutes (or freeze for use later)
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes

The Contender – Store Bought

The competition: Rhodes Frozen Bread Dough, $3.49 for 3 frozen loaves or approximately $1.16 per loaf

Ingredients: Unbleached Enriched White Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Ferrous Sulfate or Reduced Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Yeast, Soybean Oil and/or Canola Oil, Salt, Malt, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Yeast Nutrients (Calcium Sulfate, Ammonium Chloride), Abscorbic Acid, Enzyme.

The Challenger – Homemade

To be fair I probably should have use the same ingredients as the contender buy being fresh out of Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate and Ammonium Chloride I went with the recipe above.

Here are the costs of making the bread dough yourself:

Ingredient	Amount	Cost
Water	4 cups	$ 0.001
Sugar	1 1/3 cups	$ 0.426
Yeast	3 tablespoons	$ 1.339
Salt	3 teaspoons	$ 0.020
Vegetable Oil	1/2 cup	$ 0.210
Flour	12 cups	$ 1.497

 

Now given I used an electric mixer but given it was used for maybe 10 minutes at 35 watts the cost is definitely minimal.  The total cost of the ingredients for this recipe is $3.49, given the above recipe creates 4 loaves of bread this equates to a total cost of $0.87 per loaf.  So in the end making the bread dough yourself will save you $0.23 per loaf or about $24 a year assuming you consume a couple of loafs bread per week. 

It does take about 2 hours to make the bread (though much of this is rising) on the same side frozen bread dough take a few hours to defrost and rise.  Without a motorized mixer mixing and kneading your homemade bread dough is quite a workout, this one could be a close call. 

The Decision…

	Store bought	Homemade
Price
Taste
Difficulty

This one was a close one though homemade still came out on top.  With its superior taste and you still have to defrost and let the dough rise there is a decent effort even for the frozen bread dough.  Plus my daughter likes adding the ingredients the most anyway so either way we will be making the homemade option.