A little less than a year ago, I read and learn about bread makers tips, tricks, and recipes, and thought I’d give a small update on my experiments.
The bread maker I bought is functionally the Breville Custom Loaf, rebranded for the local market (“Tramontina by Breville”). I paid 565USD for it. It was on sale: the same machine now sells for anywhere between 594USD to 732USD. (These equate to about 500k then and 900k to 1,2M sats now, considering contemporaneous exchange rates. It still the best culinary investment I ever made)
My weekly recipe eventually settled upon via much trial and many errors comes from an amalgamation of various sources, by now mostly lost. In the summer, I have to halve the recipe and make bread twice as often, or the maresia / damp sea air makes it mould before we can eat the whole thing!
I have also not tried to make anything but this exact bread since I started. My dreams of raisin buns are as of yet unrealised. Next year for the end of the year, I plan to make panettone in it, as we don’t plan to travel.
My unhalved recipe is:
450mlwater (filtered, cool)1 tbspextra virgin olive oil (home made and cold pressed by our neighbour)4 cups100% whole wheat / integral flour>1 tspraw brown sugar<1 tspHimalayan salt1 tsp(freezer stored, instant dry) yeast~3/4 cupwalnuts, in pieces, raw, unsalted, to fill the “automatic” dispenser on the machine (sometimes the bulk goods shop by me is out of nuts. the bread is better with nuts, but fine without.)
Cost wise, this breaks down to:
500mLextra virgin olive oil : 7,7k sats / ±4.9USD1kgflour : 2,2k sats / ±1.4USD1kgraw brown sugar : 3,1k sats / ±1.9USD1kgHimalayan salt : 1,2k sats / ±0.8USD100gwalnuts : 3,1k sats / ±1.9USD
I didn’t include the yeast in the breakdown because I have yet to buy any. The 1kg package of yeast I purchased four years ago to make pizza and kept in the freezer since is still going strong. At present, a kilo of yeast costs 7k sats ±4.5USD.
Without nuts, my cost per loaf is 1,2k sats / ±0.8USD, while with nuts, it’s 5.1k sats / ±3.3USD. My local supermarket sells a (frankly inferior) and much smaller (350g) “100% whole wheat” loaf for 7,7k sats / ±4.9USD.
Having kept incomplete records, I believe for most of the year we have made a loaf about every five days: let’s pretend means over the past year, I’ve made 70 loaves at about a 50/50 split of nuts or no-nuts, so let’s put my total cost of making bread as 220k sats / ±141.5USD. If we buy bread, it’s an every-other-day occurance, so 1,40M sats / ±901.6USD* spent on bread in a year. Adding today cost of the bread maker to the mix, we should have saved 240k sats / ±153.48USD* so far, just in this year alone. And the breadmaker has two year warranty!
And it has served us well, with some slight oddities!
The first is based on the machine: never once in the usage of the machine has the “automatic” dispenser of nuts automatically added the nuts at the proper stage. I have read the documentation, and I can find no explanation. At present, if I want nuts added, I have to remain at home when the maker is going, as it screams something awful (buzzer) when it’s “going to” add the nuts, and then I run along and poke open the dispenser door with my finger until the latch opens and the nuts dispense into the awaiting dough. If I know I won’t be home, I don’t add nuts, because otherwise, I will come home to a nice loaf of bread and a small dispenser of lightly warmed nuts.
The second is that my recipe is not as good when I have to halve it! In the damp season, I had to throw away a few half-loaves, as mold loves my poor little bread, and the bread does not survive well in the fridge. But splitting the recipe (and altering the settings on the bread maker to reflect, which is itself an imprecise science) has yet to lead to a smaller version of my usual recipe: what comes out is a biscotti-shaped, flat, dense, but still edible loaf. I’m still figuring it out!
All in all, thanks to everyone who encouraged me, I know you are reading! Let this be encouragement to anyone else on the fence to try out a the magic and convenience of having a breadmaker!
where is the result image?
I suppose the next step is to learn about fermentation. Knowledge of breads, doughs and fermentation is fascinating
Baby steps, first you'll try to get the automatic dispenser to work before you dive into fermentation science. But you're right, that's the rabbit hole I'll fall into next.
Many members of my family make sourdough breads with regularity. I don't think any of them have kept track of their costs like you did, but seeing as the yeast is such a minimal part of the price breakdown, I doubt it changes much in that way.
Fresh bread is a wonder of humanity. With butter...oh my.
I have a cook book called The Breadbaker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart that really helped me to make better bread.
But probably nothing is so good as making bread as frequently as you do. Very inspiring.
Appreciate your comment and feedback, I'll look into that book.
Butter in bread? that could be a lighter variant, I like the background taste the olive oli gives. WIth butter will be probably sweeter.
Making bread became a meditative habit in one site, in the other end I should reduce gluten intakes.