Saving Money as Prices Rise

Bacardi infused bread?

 

That would raise the price per loaf a bit. The Bacardi might be more wisely consumed with its alcohol content un-molested.
Actually I use that bottle for watering house plants as I spill less.

 

How to save $$. I recommend one do not have a teenage daughter. And to wait patiently for your wife to get out of menopause. Both add to the electric in the heating bill there’s no two ways about it.

And I wouldn’t trade either one for the world or money

 

I bet your houseplants are always in a good mood with that watering bottle!

 

They're alive.

 

Recipe please

 

One cup 105ºF water
2 tablespoons sugar
add to that 2.5 teaspoon active dry yeast
let sit for 5 minutes just to make sure the little yeasts rehydrate
They start going bad before the expiration date on the container. BTDT. I always test.
add 2 tablespoon veg oil and about 3/4 cup warmed milk (about 100-105 degrees again) ( you can use water instead of milk)
add two cups bread flour ( you can use regular flour) and a teaspoon of salt
start mixing/ kneading it ( I use a bread mixer with dough hook because I like easy)
You can mix by hand in a bowl or just on the counter. Whatever floats your boat.
add two more cups of flour. (I use one more cup of bread flour and one cup of whole wheat flour)
4 cups of flour total at this point.
keep mixing/ kneading
This is the only tricky part and it's hard to explain but you'll have a ball of dough that should NOT be trying to stick to the bottom of the bowl. If it is, start adding small amounts of flour until it stops sticking to the bottom of the bowl. If the mixer sounds like it's going to break a gear add more water. The mixer should be laboring just a tiny bit. Now that you have a ball of dough, knead for 5 to 10 minutes.
Pop the dough ball out of the mixer bowl onto the counter. Spray the bowl with veg spray, cover with a plate (or plastic wrap) and set in a warm place for an hour.
After an hour it should have risen quite a bit .
Put the dough on the counter and cut in half. Kneed each half for about ten seconds or so, shape into an oblong and pop each dough into an oiled/sprayed bread pan.
Let rise for about 35 minutes or until the dough gets to about one inch above the rim of the bread pan.
Don't wait too long or forget about them because if you wait too long the yeast will finish rising and then collapse.
I leave them in the oven being careful not to slam the door because, again, they might collapse.
I just pop the oven temp up to 350ºF for about 35 minutes - the two breads should be 200ºF
Remove from pans and cool on a rack so they don't sweat in the pans and you should have 2 loaves of bread.

It's actually fairly easy. It's harder to explain than do. There's lots of youtube videos and websites that try to explain the process.
Some use twice as much yeast and that's way too much yeast for my taste. 2.5 teaspoons is about bare minimum and still get a decent first and second rise. I only use 25% wheat flour because I really don't like wheat bread but it's a little bit healthier. You don't have to use wheat flour at all.

Pizza dough is really easy, too.

 

Those little yeast packets are an expensive way to buy yeast. The jars are more reasonable. However, yeast don't keep. Even stored in the fridge at 6 to 9 months your rise will have a little less volume. Using 2.5 teaspoons in the process above, with a brand new bottle or really fresh packets(2.25 teaspoons) you'll have really good rise and a little bit of yeast smell when you take the baked bread out of the oven . You can get away with 2 to 2.25 teaspoons with really frssh yeast. . A jar kept in the fridge will begin to noticeably age at 6 to 9 months. Each rise will have less volume. The yeast smell will be less. You can add more yeast to compensate for aging (dead) yeast. There is a yeast test that you can do to test just how effective your yeast is. It uses a specific amount of water and yeast at a specific temperature for a specific time and you can measure the yeast growth to gauge the live/dead yeast levels. I did it and found an old jar was about 50% good. So I used twice as much. When I get down to the bottom of a jar I go a little heavy on the teaspoons.

 

To save money, cut cable TV, stop subscriptions. TV and MUSIC used to be free.
Good music can be streamed for free using apps like TuneIn radio on your phone.
Put up a TV antenna, tvfool.com and antennaweb are good resources. There was a
thread about tv antennas awhile back.Also you really don't need more than 50 mbps
internet speed, in actuality probably 20 mbps. Also sports used to be free, especially
local teams. Stop paying to watch sports.

 

Downsize. I'm not saying move into a tiny home, or for that matter to move at all. What I'm saying is go through your home, garage, barn, shed(s), etc. and start putting together all the stuff that you haven't used in years. With so many people trying to save money right now, many are looking for used items and now is a great time to sell a lot of the unneeded items in your household for quick cash (as well as decluttering). Sell on eBay, CL, FB Marketplace, etc. (obviously with caution) and it can be surprising how quick the $$ can add up for stuff just laying unused around your home. Use this money to pay off debts (not to buy new things to take the place of what you just got rid of). Lots of nut cases out there so if I can't ship an item and have to meet someone, I never have people come to the house but meet them at a neutral and public location (and I use a PO Box address when shipping, not the home address).

I realize this can be difficult for a lot of people (myself included) because you just know that you will need the widget that you haven't used in a decade the day after you sell it.

 

Made the recipe, very good. Thanks billb3.

 

Your pans may be bigger than mine. Mine are labelled 5x9 but they are only 4x7 in the bottom. One is 5x9 at the rim but the other is only 5x8. If my pans were bigger I'd have to increase volumes, in fact, I think the recipe I started with was for 5 cups of flour. I do remember it called for two packets of yeast and I found it was just way too much yeast. Especially fresh yeast. Maybe some [people like really yeasty bread. I didn't like the taste of the bread with too much yeast nor the smell in the house.

I haven't bought store bought sandwich bread since March of 2020 or so, trying to avoid exposure to Covid/SARS by cutting way back on trips to the store(s). Bread and salad fixings were something that got me out to the store at least twice a week. No more. I'm not spending anywhere near what I used to on gasoline. Milk will last me about two weeks so that's pretty much what my shopping frequency is tied to.

 

We've made bread by hand for maybe 20 years or so, and grew up doing it.
1) get the 1# pack of yeast, Red Star is one name. Put it in mason jars and freeze it. It will last for years there. We keep a larger jar in the chest freezer, and pint in the regular freezer.
2) when youre ready, make a couple sponges/starters without any yeast: there is yeast in the air outdoors. The white coating on wild grapes: yeast.
3) I use only 1-2t. of yeast for the same 2 loaf recipe. It takes just a little bit longer for the yeast to reproduce through the bread to make it rise, than if ya use 2T.
4) I quit proofing my sponge. I mix it altogether, knead it, divide into loaves, let them rise once in the pan, and bake.
5) Here: 100% by hand, no electrical machine. Mix in bowl till it's a ball/can't be further mixed. Knead on counter till elastic (when you poke it with your finger, it should bounce back, if it doesn't, keep kneading more flour in).
6)Make the sponge the same every time: 2C flour, 2t. salt, 1t. yeast, 1/4C. oil or butter. Add hot water till its a thick batter. Then mix and add the rest of the flour from there. If you want slightly larger loaves, add a half cup of flour to the static sponge, then proceed from there.
7) hot water: coming out of the tap, it should just have the sting of heat across the back of your hand. I quit measuring temp years ago. If your water wasnt quite hot enough, it will take more time for the yeast to reproduce.....put the loaves in a warm location to rise.

Bread doesnt turn out quite right: cut into cubes, mix/coat with oil and a little salt, and garlic in a bowl. Toast on cookie sheet: croutons. Or roughly cube & dry the bread and run thru the food processor. Bread crumbs.
Sca

 

Bread can then be made in any corningware or glass pan. Or free form it on a flat cookie sheet.
Take one loaf of dough, divide it into 2, roll the 2 into snakes. Braid. Bake.
Brush the top of any braid or loaf with beaten egg white.
Or, roll your loaf in cornmeal just before popping them in their pans.
Add 1 T Italian seasoning to your sponge.
Or, a T. rosemary and a t. of garlic.
Sca

 

How much yeast does a single guy need consuming 1 loaf or so of bread a week ?

 

Not much, till it's not available again. (Covid-1).
Couple teaspoons a week?
On the other hand, that depends on what else you use that bread for. If you gave a loaf away to a special someone, or a friend, or swap/barter with someone, and throw one in the freezer for later. . .
Once you start making a few and modifying the recipe (the italian seasoning one is oh so good, and likes to be shared when fresh), you could easily make a few batches a week while experimenting. And if a batch doesn't get salt, another might get made.

Then there are other yeast recipes that might catch your eye...like cinnamon buns, dinner biscuits, english muffin bread (have recipe, will share).

I kinda thought that those teeny packets were a rip off. And I never knew if they were good. And I like things in bulk.

Sca

 

Another saving thing to do that also makes things feel better too is humidify. In college I lived in a shack and the furnace was running every 5 minutes. My roommate and I did the plastic over the windows to cut out the draft. Furnace instantly went to running once every 10 minutes. We then got a vaporizer and ran it constantly. The furnace went to kicking in only once every 15 minutes. Just by reducing the draft and having moist air that holds heat better, we basically cut our furnace run time to 1/3 what it was and we didn't wake up feeling like we were going to have nose bleeds from such dry air.

 

$saving tips:
Use wood stove to heat water for a load of dishes at night.
Do the cooking and clean up during the day, so lights dont need to be run to do cleanup.
Put fridge in a pantry or seperate room from the rest of the heated house. We put ours in the pantry, door closed, and other food stored. We keep the window open a smidge, and the room stays 40's to 50's. Fridge runs less, food can stay cool on the shelves.

Close off unheated rooms.

Second freezer is in cool basement.

Thinking about putting dehumidifier on a timer, cut its use by 50%..

We're absolutely sodomized by our electric company.

Shut all uneccessary lights off. Outdoor lights, decorative interior lights.

Less idiot box (tv)

No items with phantom loads: microwave has no clock, gas stove does not even have a 120v. plug. No vcr or anythingnelse with a clock, those items could be put on a switch, or a switch on their circuit.

Skip running bathroom fan, leave the moisture in the house as noted above.

Add more wood, run fans less. We have one blowing cool air back to the stove. I quit running that a couple days ago. So far so good.

Rechargeable or solar lights/lamps etc, might work, especially those with a panel on a long cord...

A chest freezer in a cool room/basement could run one day on, one day off. Power out, ours stayed cold for a week....

Sca