This blog is about the resurgence of bread-making. To it, John Denniston - my journalistic colleague and friend of 40-plus years - cleverly replied: “The advantages of bread making as a hobby for a man include that: You don’t have make a shelf for it, don’t have to frame it, don’t have to repair it or buy a pickup truck to tow it, don’t have to get up early in the morning to do it, and most importantly, don’t have to sell it on Craigslist when you tire of it. Basically, it’s bake it; eat it; it’s gone.”
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Prediction: We’re about to see a resurgence of bread-making and the renewed popularity of bread machines. This is a slam-dunk, folks.
COVID-19 has had (and will continue to have) serious economic consequences for almost all of us. As job-replacement funding runs out in Canada and the US, the spin-offs will hit even harder.
Many of us will need to give some hard thought to belt-tightening - starting with our household spending. Himself and I have had a bread machine at the back of the kitchen cupboard for many years. I’d even considered giving it away.
About a year ago, Himself hauled it out and started making bread. Until then, I’d been buying commercially made bread at $3-to $5 a loaf. No more! That’s just too expensive.
One in five American households owned a bread machine in the late 1990’s. Less than 20 years later, almost no one was interested in making bread by hand or in a machine. A few stalwarts like my sister Paulette regularly make multiple loaves at a time, mixing, kneading, and forming them by hand. Paulette has never had a bread machine, which does all that as well as baking the bread in about three hours (and pizza dough in far less).
Packed with goodness and nutrition, Himself’s bread weighs 2 lb. (nearly 1 kg) and costs … I’ll tell you about that in a moment.
Last Fall, while nosing around Costco, we discovered the bargain of the century - a 45-lb. (20 kg) bag of coarse (i.e., stone ground) whole wheat flour. With breakfast and sandwich picnics included, we normally consume two-to-three loaves a week.
We went through this big bag in something like six months. Himself had been steadily making whole wheat and raisin breads for all that time, and was almost out of flour. At $13.49 Cdn., this gigantic bag of flour presented a huge saving over the 5- and 10-lb. (2.26-to-4.5 kg) bags we usually bought.
(Not every Costco store sells big bags like this. Phone around to find it. We found our first bag at a Costco far from the island where we live and the second, on that island.) These large bags of flour have dropped the cost of Himself’s bread-making to less than $1 a loaf, electricity not included.
We store this flour in its bag in a well-sealed, high-quality container under dark, cool conditions. Anyone who lacks a storage area could easily share such a large bag with family, friends, and neighbors. (If you live in a hot climate, you’ll already know it’s a good idea to store grain products in a moisture-proof container in the deep-freeze.)
It’s only logical that as more consumers try to spend smarter, more will begin making their own bread. In turn, the demand for larger, money-saving bags of flour and gluten-free alternatives will increase.
The company that mills the flour we bought confirms that; it’s fielded literally hundreds of consumer inquiries about bread-making over the past six weeks.
If you can’t find what you’re seeking, my advice - as always - is to ask, ask, ask. Happy baking!
© Nicole Parton, 2020
