I Heart Bread

I am a ferocious Bread Head.  I love the stuff!  I love it even more since I stopped buying it, because I make my own and it is YUMMY.  I have two breadmakers (calm down there, little dudes, I didn’t pay for either) so I can easily keep up with my voracious bread demands.  Actually, making it the “old-fashioned” way is not difficult either, but the breadmaker is great for a lazy person like me.

There are some people out there who don’t like the the way breadmaker bread tastes, so they continue to rely on store-bought to meet their needs.  Well, this is what I say: sell your dusty breadmaker on ebay, and use the little tiny amount you will receive after all your trouble to begin a saving fund for a freezer (if you don’t already have one).  When you finally have your freezer, head to your nearest bread thrift store.  Go even if it is 30 miles away.  Fill up you vehicle with as much bread as it will hold.  Take it home and freeze it.

Back in the day when I was too busy to regularly bake bread (i.e. I was gainfully employed), this is what I did.  I would buy loaf after loaf after loaf of Roman Meal whole wheat bread on the day it would expire for .50 or less a loaf (sometimes there were sales, sometimes I had a coupon).  Roman Meal was always about $3.00 per loaf in the grocery store (unless it was on sale).

These about-to-expire loaves lasted fine for up to seven days after the expiration date, though a loaf didn’t last that long in my house, as I was a dedicated brown-bagger and toast muncher. However, there are also more expensive, “fresher” loaves at the bread thrift store that are also pretty good deals if you don’t want to buy “dead” bread.

If you really want to go cheap, bulk bread flour and yeast are very inexpensive at Sam’s Club.  I like a whole-wheat honey version, so mine is a bit more expensive than that simple recipe but still cheaper than $3.00 per loaf Roman Meal.  Since the homemade version has no preservatives, it doesn’t last as long as store-bought, maybe 3 days on the counter.  But that’s a GOOD sign - it’s always a good idea to eat things that rot! But what I do to make it last is this: after the bread has cooled, I slice it up, wrap the slices in plastic wrap, and freeze them. I take frozen slices out as I need them.  They toast up beautifully, and defrost in plenty of time for brown bag lunches at work.

But if your bread goes stale, grind it up in your blender or food processor to make bread crumbs.  Put the bread crumbs in a ziploc bag, place in the freezer, use as needed.  Or you can also chop up stale bread into chunks and toast for homemade croutons.  Or you can use stale bread to make bread pudding.  But mostly what I do with any stale bread I happen to have is to chop it up and feed it to my neighborhood duck buddies.

Last year I found a momma duck sitting on her eggs underneath one of my shrubs.  She was a good little mama and never left her nest.  I called her Quackers, and made sure she had a daily supply of bread and sunflower seeds. OK, I admit to a frugal faux pas - I DIDN’T give her stale bread.

Making your own bread with bulk-purchased supplies is actually really convenient.  No, really, it is.  I never ever run out of bread, so I don’t have to make special runs to the grocery to buy this staple.  And, oh my, does my house smell wonderful when I am making it.  That aroma alone is worth the “trouble”!

A word on breadmakers: my faithful Oster finally gave up the ghost after 10 years of steady use.  So as you can see, these machines last a long time.  Just around the time it died, (3 1/2 years ago) my husband won $200.00 in Target gift certificates at work.  He gave them to me and I bought a Zojirushi breadmaker online.  This is the top of the line breadmaker, and I love it.  It is very sturdy, has 2 blades, and the bread pan is actually shaped like a loaf of bread.  Genius!

Last year for my birthday, my kind generous parents gave me a $100.00 gift certificate for Target.  I decided to go hog-wild and get myself another breadmaker.  I got a BreadMan Ultimate Plus, $100.00.  It has a neat feature that drops raisins and nuts in at the right time, so they don’t get pulverized and also so you don’t have to remember to do it yourself.  I really like this one too.  Handy to have an extra machine for those times when I’m baking bread and having pizza for dinner, or want to make two different loaves at the same time.

But these are kind of expensive breadmakers. I have seen other brands much cheaper at Walmart and other places - under $50.00.  Also, I bet if you asked around, plenty of people have them taking up valuable cabinet space in their kitchens.  I’d bet they’d be willing to sell them, cheap, or maybe just give them away for the price of a few loaves of homemade bread.