Bread and buttter

In the past 3 or 4 months, I've totally changed the way I think about food and approach cooking/recipes. Until this point in my life, I was fundamentally opposed to bread. Carbs = bad, right? Then I discovered this invention called the bread machine. As I listened to the instructions patiently pretending to be interested I never thought I would get this into making bread. But, it never ceases to amaze me, dump a whole bunch of powdery stuff in, press start, and fresh bread in 3.5 hours.

This summer I've made tons of types of bread: garden herb (with fresh herbs from the garden), banana/strawberry, banana oatmeal, mutligrain, honey whole wheat, sesame seed, lemon poppy seed, coffee-cinnamon, cinnamon-raisin, garlic Parmesan, carrot etc. Mostly we use it for sandwiches. This morning I had french toast with cinnamon-raisin bread.

I guess the whole point of this post is in response to food blogs and how to live cheaply blogs that I've been checking out recently. There was a post the other day about making sandwiches to save money. It was followed up by 80+ comments none of which included making your own bread. What kind of "frugal" life-stylers don't make their own stuff? I haven't done the math, but I'm pretty sure that my home baked bread would cost around $4 or $5 at stores, yet I'm sure it doesn't cost that much to make. Especially the plain/basic ingredient kinds.

Also, before, I would have never had flour, sugar, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, yeast, or cranberries hanging out in the closet. But now I realize that if you buy in bulk it's not so expensive and the ingredients last for a while. I admit that in the past I dismissed natural food stores as "overly expensive hippy-villes" but now I realize the benefit of buying simple natural ingredients. Also I found out that our local natural food store does a 15% off (the entire store) sale once a month. If the natural food stores in the middle of nowhere can do it, I can only imagine the sweet deals in real cities!

So there all you wannabe cheapskates. I make my own delicious bread and it doesn't really cost that much.