Normal Weekly Routine

If you followed the old blog, you would have seen that a few years ago we started using a five dollar breadmaker from the thrift store, and here we are, on another blog, but still with the normal weekly routine of baking a morning loaf. It took us a few minutes while making coffee this morning to set up the Panasonic and as usual, three hours later, it beeped three times and one of these appeared :

The cost of a loaf like this is fascinating, and worthy of note.

A 10kg bag of whole wheat flour is $6.50 and a loaf uses 375g. So, the flour costs 24 cents. A 4kg bag of sugar, $3.75 so the 3 teaspoons, 12g, cost 1 cent, the yeast costs $6.24 for 908g, so the cost per loaf is about 2.4 cents, salt costs less than 1 cent, water is (relatively) free and a splash of olive oil is perhaps another 7 cents. Add the hydro costs to bake, at 550w/hr during the 45 minute cooking cycle, plus a bit for the proving cycle and mixing, let's say, to be conservative, a kilowatt, then the cost is 9 cents. So, cost per loaf is less than 45 cents which is a fraction of the average cost of a loaf of whole wheat bread at the supermarket.

Karen and myself have just had a fresh, buttered crust of the new loaf, and it is marvellous, plus this basic whole wheat offering makes perhaps the best and freshest toast you can imagine.

Hungry yet?