by Tricia
Over in the comments section on my post about making our own bread, Rich brought up a great point that when you factor in some other costs besides the ingredients, homemade items may actually cost more than pre-made. That is an excellent point.
– If it takes one hour to make something, is it worth spending the time doing that versus using that time to bring in more income?
– What about the cost to run your appliances?
For the first question, I think that one is highly subjective. I ran the numbers, and once I added my time into my bread making – the price of the homemade bread did rise above the store bought bread. But then I thought about the non-monetary benefits. I felt like a million bucks when my son told me thank you for making the bread – he loved it so much. Now that I’ve done it once, he’ll join me in the kitchen for the next loaves I bake. I think it will be nice time spent together.
For the second question, I had no clue on how to factor in appliance usage costs. Rich came to the rescue and found an article written June of this year that gives some approximate usage costs by appliance:
Newsminer.com Article
According to the article, an oven costs about $0.43/hour to operate. So four our bread it cost about $0.22/loaf to bake them. That’s not too bad, especially since if we bake bread in the winter it will help heat the house a little bit so our furnace doesn’t have to work as hard. If it was around $1.00/loaf, I may start to rethink making our own bread, but the cost doesn’t seem too bad to me right now.
When everything is factored in, the homemade bread did cost more than the store bought bread. The cost of my time put it way over the top. But when I thought about it a little bit, I do my share of wasting time during the day. One great example is watching TV. If I replace that TV watching with creating food from scratch for our family, then that is an improvement. So I think that’s another way of looking at it. I’m still not making income, but I am making better use of my time during non-working hours.
I’m trying to cook more here at home, and make more nutritional meals; something you can’t put a price on when it comes to your family’s health. If it costs a little more than buying it in the store, that’s okay. The way I look at it, it’s either pay for good nutrition now, or pay for the medical bills resulting from bad health later.
I’m the same. I just like the smell of fresh bread. Unfortunately, I used to bake my own but have stopped – I’ll certainly be getting back into it soon.
Thanks for the shout-out, Tricia! I have fallen into the “do it myself” trap quite a few times and most always it turns out that the value of those things is not what I wanted it to be.
But you are absolutely right. If it brings you and your family happiness AND it is something that you enjoy doing or relieves stress, it can replace other down time in your schedule. Just don’t get too worn out baking that you need to take more time for rest. It takes discipline…which throughout this process you are showing that you have a lot of! 🙂
There are many other costs that go into the cost of buying or making bread – fraction of car ownership and maintenance costs for the car you use to go to the store to either buy the bread or the ingredients to make the bread. The fraction of the cost of the appliances and utensils, bowls, etc you use in preparing the bread. The pans, the water, heated, to clean up after. A person could go crazy figuring in every possible related cost!
The pure satisfaction of making your own bread and having it piping hot from the oven trumps all those other things. If you plan the baking so that other things can be baked in the oven along with the bread, its even more economical. The nice thing about making your own, you can choose the type of flour that goes into the bread. Bake the bread, enjoy!
“The cost of my time put it way over the top.”
You’re kidding, right? If you weren’t baking bread, you would have been doing something that paid?
Cheers,
Ken
I find (and it seems you do too) cooking and baking can be relaxing. So I don’t count my time in the “cost” of making it either. It’s fun! The food I make usually tastes better than what I could buy in the store. I also like knowing *exactly* what is in it, and being able to change something up if I am in the mood.
Ex: I recently started making my own energy bars at home. They cost $0.33 a bar (including only cost of ingredients) whereas a somewhat equivalent bar at the store is $1.69-1.99. They take ~20 minutes to make, and they don’t have *any* ingredients I don’t want (no high fructose corn syrup, glucose, wheat, puffed rice, etc). Oh, and they’re delicious. 🙂 But the best part is I find making them fun and my dog likes to “help” (he eats stray peanuts). My boyfriend won’t eat them, but he likes seeing me make them because he can tell it makes me happy! So even if they were to cost more if I factored other things in, I’d still do it. Can’t put a price tag on some experiences.
Happy bread making!
Sherri,
How do the homemade energy bars taste? This sounds like a great place to substitute homemade if the taste is comparable. What recipe do you use?
Tracie – Aaaaaahhhhhh! You just made my head spin with the extra costs LOL. But you are right. I only had foil bread pans and I have been looking into buying some actual ones. So, there is absolutely some cost there.
Ken – I am limited in hours with my day job, but there’s always part time jobs and working on our business. So technically, I could be making money or working towards making money at a future date. I guess it’s all about balance.
Sherri – you have me curious about your energy bars too 🙂
I have a full time job outside the home, but make breakfast before, come home for lunch, and make dinner from scratch most days. While I typically don’t bake my own bread, I do cook those three meals from scratch almost every day. Maybe it’s because I grew up eating home cooked, but it doesn’t seem to me like it takes any longer to eat my way vs Hamburger Helper or Pasta Roni, etc. I think it’s a matter of getting your cooking groove down: learning how long stuff takes to cook, which items go in first, etc. so that your time is well utilized. For instance, w/bread, you spend a lot of time waiting for it to rise. If you were preparing say a pot roast while the bread rose, you’re making full use of your time. Plus it’s relaxing and of course healthier. Kids love cooking, its kind of like science for them, and kids who learn how to cook are in short supply!
I suggest to make this kind of activities a part of the family activities. So if you don’t know what to do during the weekend, maybe cooking can be a good entertainment.
Maybe is a matter of adding more benefits and savings to these kind of activities.
Don’t forget about all the nutrients that the store bought bread is fortified with! Typically that can’t be replicated in home made breads unless maybe the flour itself is fortified.
Eileen, you bring up a good point, however, I think that additives are generally more of a negative than a positive. Think about the preservatives that create that insane shelf life!
Tricia-You can do other things while baking bread. If you have a timer, you can work or cook dinner while you wait for it to rise. There are recipes that can be made at night and will rise over night in your fridge. Then you are just looking at the time it takes to throw the ingredients together. I almost never buy baked goods–they’re not nearly as good as home-made. Once you get used to the real thing, it’s hard to go back to the chemical taste of many store-bought baked items. It’s also about control–you decide what goes in your body!
I will start by saying I made up this recipe by combining information from some recipes online and a fruit and nut bar I liked at the store. I’m a vegetarian and I’ve been trying to incorporate more good fats, omega 3’s, and proteins into my diet, which is why this bar is heavy in nuts. It meets my needs! I love them, and so do others who have sampled them, but they may not be your cup of tea. You can rearrange the recipe to include oats, puffed rice, soy protein, or exchange different nuts you like better.
Peanut Butter Bars
Ingredients:
1 cup all natural peanut butter
1/3 cup honey
1 cup raisins (I use a raisin medley for Trader Joe’s, they are nice and big and juicy)
1/2 cup peanuts
1/2 cup walnuts
1/2 slivered almonds
Put peanut butter and honey in a pan and heat on low until creamy and melted. Add remaining ingredients and mix together well, making sure the peanut butter/honey mixture coats the nuts and raisins. (If there are untouched nut/raisin clumps your bars will fall apart.) Place into a 9X9 or 8X8 cake pan and press into a level flat shape. Refrigerate for several hours and then cut!
This recipe makes 16 bars. I cut them up and put them in tupperware in the fridge for at home use. When I want to take one to work I wrap some up in foil for travel. They don’t melt (just get a little softer) after a full day in my bag. The approximate nutrition facts for one bar are below. Note that they are high in fat, but it is all good fat from peanut butter and nuts! Thus, they keep me nice and full. If you exchange some oats for some of the nuts you can lower the fat content. 10g of the sugar comes from the raisins, so you can also make adjustments there to lower sugar. Again, these bars might not meet everyone’s dietary needs. I encourage you to look around the internet for homemade bars, if there is a particular type of bar you like and want to imitate.
Calories: 260
Fat Calories: 151
Total Fat: 17g (26% DV)
Sat. Fat: 3g (15%)
Sodium: 6mg (0%)
Total Carb: 21g (7%)
Fiber: 3g (12%)
Sugars: 16g
Protein: 7g
Oops, sorry they make 14 bars not 16. 🙂
Sure it’s easier to run to the store and buy every single thing you ever eat! But that takes time and costs money, too. You know what is going into this bread – no preservatives – and it’s fresh. Fresher ingredients give you more nutrients. I think I’ll go through the ingredients into our breadmaker for a loaf to go with dinner!
Ah, as to the stove issue, it’s 43¢ no matter how many loaves are in there. And bread freezes really well. If you do feel the need to economize farther, just do 4 at a time and freeze two of them. Also, time not spent at the store, is time not spent risking buying something you don’t really need. And the more time spent in the raw material aisles the less temptation. I’ve noticed that there are aisles I never go down, and when I do as a shortcut they are full of pushy promotions. There is some inherent truth in that about who shops where in the store.
I myself consider making food from scratch to be part of living well. I’d give up the TV in a heartbeat before I’d give that up. Like you said about your son being thrilled, you can’t buy that satisfaction from your family, nor the better health, long term. There is no price tag you can put on it, period.
Tricia – it just occurred to me, are you using those little yeast packets? Or the tiny little 8 ounce jar? Oh, if you want to make bread and save money, you need to invest in the 2 pound bag of baking yeast that Costco sells. We just bought some recently and it’s $3.39 for the bag. Costco also sells bread flour much cheaper than you can buy from the grocery store. I bet your cost per loaf will plummet if you at least buy your yeast in bulk. BTW, I did make a loaf of bread to go with dinner, thanks for the inspiration!
I would use the little packets just to teach yourself how to do it, and then get the big jar once you mastered it.
I buy the 2lb bag of instant dry yeast from Smart and Final, and I put it in a plastic jar with a tight fitting lid in the freezer. I just spoon it straight from the freezer into the rest of the ingredients no problem. I’ve probably been working on the same jar for over a year now and the yeast is still active.
Don’t forget, you can make several loaves at a time or just prepare and freeze the dough. That will also save time and money. You can also buy ingredients, like flour, yeast and sugar, in bulk, which will save. Also, look for bread pans at places like Goodwill or another thrift store or garage sales. They’re pretty inexpensive and easy to find.
Thanks for the info. I’ve recently started an all effort to not only save money where possible but to document how much I’m saving. I’ve been a little unsure how to account for the costs around cooking, so these figures are quite helpful. I’ll start using these figure on my savings blog.
Thanks!