How to save money on ingredients for homemade bread and pizza

Everyone loves homemade bread - there's just nothing like eating fresh hot bread with butter melting on it. But with the high price of flour and other ingredients, you're wondering if you're actually saving by using the bread machine instead of just buying it ready made at the store. Here's how to make it affordable.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• grocery store sales flyer
• wholesale store access

1. The biggest cost-savings measure that I can offer for making bread, focaccia, and pizza dough at home is where to buy yeast. You need to use one packet for each batch - if you buy it at the grocery store, three packets can cost $3! That's a dollar a batch! On sale, sliced bread costs that much. On a great sale, you may be able to find the packets for 50 cents each, about the cost of using yeast in a jar.
   
   Here's what you do - go to Costco (or other wholesale warehouse store) and buy the 2 lb brick of Red Star yeast for $3.39. Let me do math for you - less than 3 cents per use vs. 50 cents or more when you buy the packets. Even if you never use the whole brick, which would be two or more batches a week for a year, you will save big if even if you make only one batch a month.
2. Flour is the ingredient you'll need the most of for using your bread machine at home. You may be tempted to buy it at the wholesale warehouse, but unless you know you will use 25 lbs of flour soon, it's not worth it - it's too hard to store properly and unmanageable for most people.
   
   Watch the flyers for your local grocery store - even with the recent price increases, I can still occasionally find 5 lb sacks of name-brand flour for $1.25. Note: I always use all-purpose flour and not bread flour - I don't really notice a difference except price. I grab a couple when they're $1.25 - each sack is enough for about 5 loafs of bread or batches of pizza dough. Comparatively, that bulky 25 lb bag of flour is $7.49, more than the small, more manageable name-brand sacks.
3. The same advice as above goes for sugar and olive oil. If you can plan ahead and buy these ingredients when they're on a great sale at the grocery store, you won't have to deal with the enormous bags or cans from the warehouse, even if you intend to use it all up. If you can't wait and the bulk warehouse items are the way to go, see if you have a friend that wants to share the items.
4. If you are making pizza or calzones, buy large blocks of mozzarella and use your food processor to shred it yourself.
5. Finally, if you don't have a bread machine already, get yourself one! The benefits of making your own bread are many, and it takes such a small amount of work to make a loaf that it's a shame to waste this opportunity to save money! Ask around to see if there is a friend or family member that wants to unload theirs; otherwise, go to a yard sale. The last time I went, I saw several bread makers for $5!

Tips & Warnings

• Use all-purpose flour instead of bread flour.
• Be sure to not to contaminate the yeast with any moisture and store it in an air-tight container in the freezer to keep it fresh.