Homemade Cheaper?

I get asked about this subject from time to time.  Are homemade food products really cheaper?  Once you buy everything you need and spend the time is it cheaper to make your own bread versus buying it yourself?  For me, the answer is yes.  I also enjoy the process of baking/cooking homemade items and I like controlling the ingredients that go in to what my family eats.

But I want you to know how to figure it out for yourself.  I keep this figures handy to figure out what the cost of something is.  Beware, math ahead!

Tip #29

I've talked about Price Per Ounce before and how it's important to figure that out.  But sometimes I want to drill down on that idea even more.  Primarily I want to know this information in relation to baking things like bread and pasta. 

So the first thing you have to know is how many cups of flour there are in a pound.  The answer to that is 4.5 cups of flour per pound. 

I regularly buy a 5 lb bag of flour for $1.45.  A 5 lb bag of flour has 22.5 cups of flour in it.  That means that a cup of flour costs me right around $.06.

My favorite artisan bread recipe calls for 6 1/2 cups of flour (this makes 3-4 loaves of bread).  The flour in this recipe costs me $.39.  This is the total amount for my 3-4 loaves of bread!

Sugar is another one that I frequently want to be able to compare.  There are 2.25 cups of sugar per pound.  The sugar I buy is a 5 lb bag (most are 4 lb so check this on yours).   A 5 lb bag of sugar has 11.25 cups of sugar in it.  The price is normally around $1.75 on this 5 lb bag.  So that means a cup of sugar costs approximately $.16.

You can do this with anything of course.  Eggs are typically around $1.00 lately.  So that means an egg is about $.08.  I get a pound of butter for approximately $1.80 normally.  There are 32 Tblsp. of butter per pound (per box).  That means that butter is $.06 per Tblsp. 

Back to the original question of whether or not it's worth it to make things that are homemade as opposed to buying store-bought, using the artisan bread recipe as an example.

2 packets of yeast ($1.00 for a strip of 3 packets)  = $.66 for 2
1 1/2 Tbls. Kosher Salt ($.02 per Tbls.) = $.03
6 1/2 cups flour = $.39
Cornmeal for dusting = approximately $.25

Grand total for this recipe approximately $1.33.  And this makes 3-4 loaves of bread!  That makes it approximately $.44 per loaf.  For me this is definitely worth it. 

Photo by Afroswede