A little Math goes a long way in frugality.

I have to admit....I like things to be easy for me. Unfortunately, convenience means more money and a lot of times less healthy when it comes to food. I had been baking all of our bread up for a few months up until April when I went into the hospital and then again in May when I had my surgery. Since then we have been buying bread at the grocery store and I have noticed a few things...
One being that the bread often goes bad without my family eating it. They became accustomed to fresh baked bread...so that artificial tasting bread was less appealing and they would rather just eat something else. It wasn't a whole loaf or anything, but there were always some slices left over. Another thing I noticed is the price of bread! It has gone up significantly. I think I pay at least $2.00 for a decent loaf....my family (mainly husband) still likes white bread and refuses to eat the brown stuff (which is my favorite!). Anyways, recently I have started to feel much better so I started to bake our bread again. I made a couple of loaves in my bread machine and wasn't happy with the results. If I bake them inside the bread machine they almost always come out deflated and dry. It didn't matter what recipe I used either. So I decided that I won't bake bread in there anymore, I will only use the dough cycle and bake the bread in the oven (which is unfortunate during the summer, it stays much cooler without the oven). Last week I started baking my bread in bulk using a recipe from hillbillyhousewife.com (thank you Christy for reminding me about that recipe!). While kneading the bread, I started to wonder how much I was actually saving per loaf/batch.

So I figure it out..lol.

I did have to estimate on some ingredients because the cost is very minimal....like one hundreths of a cent.....so we'll call it a penny ;p

This is for one batch of bread or 4 loaves.

Flour - Cost per 10 lb (Winco) $3.56 (Unbleached All Purpose)
approx 40 cups of Flour per 10 lb bag
Need approx 12 cups
Cost per batch: $.89
Cost per loaf: $.22 (is there a cents symbol on a keyboard..lol?)

Water- Need 4 cups
Free

Sugar- Cost per 5lb bag $2.00 (approx)
approx 10 cups per 5 lb bag (or (30) 1/3 cup servings
Need 1/3 cup
Cost per batch: $.06
Cost per loaf: 1.5 cents

Yeast: Cost per 4 oz jar $3.00 (approx)
24 tsps per 4 oz jar
Need 4 tsp per batch
Cost per batch: $.50
Cost per loaf: 12.5 cents

Salt: I spend about .50 cents for a 26 oz container.
Need 1 Tbsp per batch
Cost is pretty insignificant...so I am not going to even add it in ;p

Oil: I spend about 2.00 (actually 2.12 today) for a 48 oz bottle of Oil
96 Tbsps per bottle
Need 1/3 cup (which is 5 tbsps +1 Tsp)
Cost per batch: 10 cents
Cost per loaf: 2.5 cents

Total cost per batch of bread (4 loaves): $1.05
Total cost per loaf of bread: .26 cents.

Hmmm.... now let's take the average cost of a GOOD loaf of White bread.

My family eats about 2 loaves of store bought bread a week but about 3 loaves of homemade.

Store bought bread = 1.50 x 2 loaves or $3.00 a week ($12.00/ month or $144.00 a year)
Homemade bread = .26 cents x 3 loaves or .78 cents a week ($3.12/month or $37.44 a year)

That's a savings of $2.22 a week, $8.88 a month, or $106.56 a year!

Now I know that doesn't seem like much alone, but imagine the money you'd save by making all or most of your food from scratch? You'd save a lot more than you think.
It does take more time to cook from scratch, but with menu planning, using the same ingredients for multiple recipes, and thinking ahead, you'd be able to save a lot more money on your groceries :)

You know, what really motivated me to write this post was a show I was watching on TV earlier. It was "A Baby Story". The woman had just had her 1st baby and was crying because she had to return to work soon. How heartbreaking is was to see :( I couldn't imagine leaving my little ones with someone else, let alone paying them to take care of the children God blessed me with. But IMO there are ways to be able to stay home. I think it's really sad when people put their lifestyles above the emotional and more importantly, spiritual needs of their children.

Frugality is a fun little hobby...especially when it's benefiting my family ...the preservatives in store bread are awful!

Enjoy this day that the Lord has made!