I don’t know if you have one or not but our breadmaker saves us alot of money. Could this be a gift from family at Xmas? We have a Panasonic SD 255 breadmaker. Cost us £90 from john Lewis and we have not bought bread since. Out of a bag of brown flour for about 80p I can get three loaves of beautiful bread. Of course, you can use wholemeal flour, or half and half to be more healthy then brown…. If you buy bread right now this would be a lot cheaper after the initial expense and it only has 5 ingredients so you know exactly what is in it. It costs about 12p for a ‘5 hour loaf’ or about 4 p or 5 p to make a rapid 2 hour loaf.

We are vegetarian. We eat alot of lentils! very cheap! Lentil soup for family of four costs under a pound. Lentil roast very cheap too. I have lots or cheap recipes. we spend £55 per week from online tesco which buys organic milk and eggs for everyone. organic cheese for children. ‘normal’ fruit and veg, store cupboard food and things like ecover washing up liquid and washing liquid etc etc.

notes on a waldorf inspired family life:
http://mamauk.typepad.com

I think freecycle or freegle or at the very least ebay is a good place to find a breadmaker, it´s the sort of thing people buy then go off. That said if you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, or can acquire one, that takes the pain out of bread making - and IMO much nicer than bread maker bread.

MountainMama - 02 September 2010 03:24 PM

I think freecycle or freegle or at the very least ebay is a good place to find a breadmaker, it´s the sort of thing people buy then go off. That said if you have a stand mixer with a dough hook, or can acquire one, that takes the pain out of bread making - and IMO much nicer than bread maker bread.

have you tried the bread from the panasonic breadmaker? It makes such wonderful bread, heads and shoulders above other breadmaker brands. I actually got it recommended through my sister and a baker recommended it to her!!!!! It always amazes me that it takes about three minutes to put the ingredients in the bread pan and then a few hours later you have a fresh loaf of bread! From a waldorf point of view I would love to make bread by hand every day but really that isn’t practical for me.  Also from a frugal point of view I think it is cheaper to run a bread machine rather than turning on an oven for one loaf of bread.

When breadmakers end up being abandoned it usually is because it is a not very good breadmaker which makes horrible bread! The reviews on amazon speak for itself about the quality of bread from the machine

notes on a waldorf inspired family life:
http://mamauk.typepad.com