Which do you think would be cheaper, buying your food from the store or making it from scratch. Here is how you can calculate it to find out for sure. Using bread as an example Find the price of the cheapest bread you buy and calculate how much of it you buy per month. Check to see how much of each ingredient you need to make each loaf and multiply by the amount of loaves you buy per month. Now check to see how much it is to purchase those ingredients to equal the amount of loaves you need. Now multiply the cook time for each loaf by the price per wattage for baking those loaves. (bet you did not see that one coming) Add all the amounts together and divide by the number of loaves. That will tell you how much you are spending per loaf to bake your own bread verses buying it from the store. Now for bread... it is cheaper to buy, unless you use a wood oven where you chop your own wood. There are however, some things that are cheaper to make yourself... pancakes for instance equal out to be cheaper to prepare the batter from scratch verses buying it. You do the math and you could save yourself thousands on groceries every year.
But the cheapest loaf of bread/sliced bread might not be as tasty as the homemade version. Also, preservatives and all. Good for the pancakes though-- the ready mix batter version really, really just ain't as tasty. I think there was a book about what products were a better deal to buy, and what products were a better idea to make yourself. Cannot quite remember the name of the book... anyone?
I think comparing to the cheapest loaf of bread or cheapest of whatever product you make is a bad way to do it unless you actually buy the cheapest loaf of bread. When I buy bread, I tend to buy things like pepperidge farms rye-pump swirl or baked bread from the farmers market. That's more expensive than a cheap loaf. So if I bought a LOT of bread, baking might be cheaper or the same but we don't eat much bread. We eat so little of it that I freeze it to keep it from going bad. Which makes baking it less practical. I agree with you about pancake mix though. And when you mix your own, you can experiment with types of flour to give you more taste. It's also convenient to mix up a large bag of the dry ingredients and store. That makes it just as convenient as the store bought. Another thing we eat a lot of is instant oatmeal. I've saved a LOT of money since I started buying a large container of the quick cook rolled oats and adding my own flavors and/or dried fruit or whatever. My daughter doesn't like needing to measure it out from the large container in the morning, especially if it's cold, so I set up a few bowls with lids for her in the cabinet. That way she only has to flip the switch on the kettle, add boiling water to the pre-prepared bowl, and wait a few minutes. She's slow to wake up.
It depends on the food you're making vs buying and whether you consider your future hospital bills into that amount lol. I'm Canadian, so I guess that isn't a worry for me, but I prefer to stay healthy, so I make everything, regardless of it's cost in a store.. even though my grocery bill is less than most people's and I rarely ever eat a processed food. I guess most people don't think this way though....
