Sponge starters for instance, lower the cost of yeast considerably because the yeast keeps growing. The 1/2 tablespoon to start the sponge can last indefinitely if you feed the sponge and keep it going.

With the bread recipe I make, it takes water, oil, salt and sponge starter. That’s it. Calculating the cost of the flour, it’s about 29 cents per loaf, with at most, 21 more cents in oil and water costs. That’s 1.00 for every recipe I make.

If I made bread 7 times a week… that would be $7 for 14 loaves.

The only problem with homemade bread is how magically delicious it is which makes the loaves disappear quickly.

Anyway the costs are not so unreasonable, in my opinion. Like Adult student said, sometimes it’s more of a pain to drive to the nearest Costco (never mind dealing with the ridiculous people buying gallons of mayo). You can’t blame the author for using location-based costs, if you’re doing the same thing…

Bottom line: I’d like to see more articles like this. I think it’s helpful.

You have to remember, hardcore people that will make their own cake, bread, and granola–they are generally super shoppers who would not pay anywhere near “typical” prices for the ingredients, so they’ll always come out ahead making stuff by scratch.

I am past the point of needing to calculate per-serving prices on food, but I would actually like to see more of this type of thing as it can be so helpful for the PF beginner.

Maybe taking it a little further into, e.g., the difference in cost between a frozen serving of fettucine alfredo vs. a restaurant serving vs. DIY with ramen, meltable cheap cheese, and canned peas (I ate a lot of that in grad school!).

e.g. Basic Bread from Jamie Oliver
- 1kg strong bread flour
- 625ml tepid water
- 30g fresh yeast or 3 x 7g sachets dried yeast
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 1 level teaspoon fine sea salt
- extra flour for dusting

After all the meat is removed I put the bones in the slowcooker, add carrots/onions/garlic/bay/whatever else I have, add water to the top and cook on low for 10 hours or overnight. Cool, strain and freeze in containers. The best chicken stock, for “free”. (I use ends of veggies and also grow my own carrots and shallots, bay tree, garlic)

Good organic stock in a box costs $3.99 in my area. I can make this weekly for pennies. And I use stock in everything, risotto, pastas, etc.

Vegetable stock “for free” when you use the peels of veggies and cover with water in the crockpot for about 4 hours.

But like everything, you have to figure out what’s worth it for YOU and what’s not.

Yogurt seems pretty universal though.

Just for yet another personal perspective: my household makes about 1-2 loaves of bread and 3/4 quart of yogurt per week.

- We buy our bread flour and yeast from Costco, herbs from our garden and use a bread machine, and so our costs per loaf are less than $1/loaf for 10 minutes of effort, and yields super tasty bread.
- We get 2% milk, use about 1 tbsp of starter yogurt per batch, and use a yogurt maker, and so our yogurt costs are closer to $1/batch, again for about 10 minutes of effort.

There are certainly some things that are cheaper or easier from the store, but these two are absolutely not among them if you have the right environment for it.

Try to google a receipe of what you are about to buy – pasta, cake, cookies, etc. Then make it and see how easy it is. You may not do it everytime, but you soon learn what your grand parents used to do every day – make it from scratch!

I prefer sourdough bread, but I’m often away and don’t want to deal with a starter.

It’s not to say these things aren’t important, rather, these calculations can be as simple or detailed as we want. It all depends on what’s important to us. For instance, I ignore energy costs because my rent includes utilities. (I try to save energy wherever I can, but electricity is a fixed cost for me.)

Maybe the author was confused on how many ounces in a gallon? I haven’t seen anywhere on the West Coast that is that expensive.