Store bought bread is now a foreign concept for us. For the last 4 years, we have been baking all our own bread with and without help from a bread machine. We find that the convenience of using a bread machine with the timer function works great. We can have freshly baked bread ready at 4:00 am when we get up for work or have it baked and ready at 2:30pm when I get home from work or from a weekend day out. We have it down to such a routine that a new loaf can be ready to start within 5 minutes.

We found that it took many experimental loafs to test and find what ratio of ingredients works best for us and now have a spiral bound book with about 20 different recipes of which we use 7-8 of them on a regular basis. We also use the machine to make pizza dough which we double the recipe and freeze 1/2 of the dough for future use.

The cost for the machine was nothing as it was given to us for free. In the long run, we know exactly what goes into the bread and it is one less thing to have buy at the store.

On the odd ocassion, we still make bread the old school way...by hand and baked in the oven which does make a nicer loaf but a little more time consuming and not as flexible for our schedules as mentioned above.

Either method, our cost for a loaf of bread (we only make wholewheat, rye or multigrain) ranges from .40 cents to .90 cents per 1-1/2 lb loaf...the price difference depends on the ingredients used. It should be noted that in our AO, a loaf of 7 multigrain bread is now $2.99 so there is significant cost benefits for home baked bread.

Yeast bread can also be made very easily without any pans and over an open campfire when out multi-day hiking or camping. No time to post the methods tonight, I'll try at some later date though.