I recently read a statistic in a magazine (can’t remember which one) that alarmed me. According to the magazine Americans spend 90% of their food budget on processed or prepared food. Yikes! In a society where we are constantly being told processed food is bad for us, why would we buy so much of it? The reasons are, or course, that it’s cheap and easy. In our house, much more than 10% of our grocery money is spent on produce and baking supplies, but we are certainly guilty of buying processed foods: dry pasta, sauce, veggie burgers and bread are a few things I don’t often make myself. My husband and I decided we could do better, so we undertook a project: we decided to make our own bread for a couple of weeks.

Bread baking is nothing new at our house. We’ve always enjoyed homemade bread on special occasions and know it’s not a terribly difficult thing to do. But our everyday sandwich bread was baked in a factory far away and brought to our store on a truck. Could we do better? I started off by making a loaf in a bread machine my mother-in-law lent me. While it was baking, I whipped up a loaf of wheat from a recipe on a bag of wheat flour. Both turned out great, but the bread machine loaf was small and didn’t last long, and the wheat loaf I made was baked in a round on a cookie sheet- yummy, but not great for sandwiches. When the bread was gone a few days later my husband (who is really the bread baker in the family) decided to get into the act. (Disclaimer: In no way did I force my husband to bake bread for MY experiment. He is just competitive and knows he makes better bread than I do.) He made a great loaf of rye and another wheat in a bread pan, (much more practical for everyday use.)  My husband likes to use a no-knead recipe which means he mixes up the dough in the afternoon, then shapes the loaf the next morning. Three hours later, I pop it into the oven. A few days after all his work, guess what? We were out of bread! (I never noticed how much larger store-bought loaves are!) When I told my husband, he sighed and went to work. This time, he made some wonderful sandwich buns and another loaf of wheat (which, by the way dear, is almost gone.)

Yesterday I went grocery shopping, and when my husband got home he went straight for the fridge. “You didn’t buy any bread?” he asked with a sigh and just a hint of pleading in his eyes. I hadn’t, but his reaction tells me our experiment is about over. He’s been such a good sport! Maybe I’ll break down and buy some bread next week, but I’ll miss the fun of having our own little bakery. I’m still not crazy about spending so much money on processed foods, but baking your own bread does take a lot of time. Also, homemade bread is delicious and we’re probably eating too much of it!

Hmm… maybe it’s time to make all our own pasta for a while….