My Daily Dollars

One great way to save money is to make more of your baked goods at home.  Now, after work, I’m too tired to bake much of anything, but I’ve found that condensing all the activity into one day on the weekend works really well.  Of course, I’m hardly reinventing the wheel here.  People have been baking at home for centuries and a “baking day” was a common way to tackle the chore.  The New Homemaker reminds us of a time when chore days were so popular that dishtowels were made to correspond, sort of like days-of-the week underwear for housewives.  I don’t feel the need to assign all the rest of my tasks around the house to days, but baking day is working out nicely.

Plan what you’ll need for the week.

Think through what baked goods you usually buy at the store.  Can you bake most of them at home?  With a good cookbook, you’ll find it’s pretty easy to bake loaves of bread, cornbread, pizza crusts, muffins, pita bread, granola bars, cookies, cakes, and more.  I’ve started off with two loaves of bread, crackers or pita bread, granola bars, pizza crust, and some kind of cookie or cake if we’re entertaining or we have the kids.  Don’t try to do more than four or five things in one day.  I’d recommend just starting out with two to three.

Jump in and bake!

Start with loaves of bread so that you’ll have plenty of time for them to rise.  I do this as soon as I get up in the morning.  Then, I relax or do other work during the first rise, and crank out the rest of my baked goods during the second rise.  By them time I’m done baking my granola bars and crackers, the oven is good and hot for the bread.  Do try to plan according to oven temperature.  I’m finding it easiest to bake the recipe with the coolest oven temperature first, then increase.

Easy clean-up

Here’s my favorite reason to have a baking day.  It actually makes cleaning up easier.  Since I have all the mixing bowls, measuring cups, and measuring spoons out, I can just do a quick rinse and move on to then next item.  If I were to try and bake a bit one or two nights during the week, I’d drag everything out, use it, wash it, put it away, and have to repeat the next time.  This way, it all blends into one big frenzy.

Freeze a bit

Lots of baked goods freeze quite well.  I’m trying to bake two cakes instead of one, for example, and then freeze the extra.  We eat pizza at least once a week.  You can make the crust, bake it for 5 -7 minutes (instead of the usual 15 or so) and freeze it.  I’m hoping to end up with three to four things in the freezer so that if I have a busy weekend I can skip a baking day but still have a supply of things to work with.

Significant Savings

As you know, I bought plenty of baking ingredients during my big bulk-shopping trip.  I used to buy bread, crackers, granola bars, and pizza crusts every week.  That quickly added up to $20 a week, or $80 a month.  Now, my bulk baking supplies were about $60 for three months.  All told, I save $180 over three months by baking at home.  That’s a great savings!

Significant Satisfaction

With the weather is getting cooler, I just love the idea of a baking day.  Saturday, our house was full of wonderful smells, and we had delicious bread for soup and sandwiches.  We also had a spiced apple cake for breakfast that was yummy enough for my youngest stepdaughter to request it as her birthday cake.  I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was actually healthy!  I just said, “Sure, that’d be a perfect birthday cake.”  In this age of trans-fats and tasteless, mass-produced baked goods, baking at home is a wonderful way to control quality and nutrition.  With a little organization, you’ll find home-baked goods are infinitely preferable to their store-bought versions.