imple Vegetarian | Thrift Week 2018, Day Four: Brian's Basic Brown Bread

So a ways, my meals-based totally Thrift Week birthday party has focused strictly on dinner recipes?Which moreover provide leftovers that double as lunches. But if we are truely going to cowl a whole week of frugal consuming, we additionally need to speak approximately breakfast. What does a frugal morning meal seem like?

In my case, it's miles nearly continuously the same aspect: a cup of cocoa and more than one quantities of toast. The simplest way to make this breakfast might be to grab a loaf of bread from the store, which has around 20 slices, for approximately $2.50. That comes to a quarter for 2 slices; a bit of margarine or butter adds every other penny or . Add a packet of Swiss Miss, and the whole involves around 37 cents, which isn't always bad in any respect for a whole meal.

However, at our residence, we pick out to cook dinner from scratch, which is typically tastier in addition to inexpensive. We used to make all our bread in a bread device, till it died a tragic lack of existence lower back in 2013. Rather than update it, Brian determined to try making our bread the old skool manner, definitely kneading it by hand. This calls for a little more planning, since it takes the better a part of an afternoon to get from flour to completed loaf, but maximum of that is honestly growing time; the most effective fingers-on element is the kneading, and Brian truly appears to discover that a soothing interest.

So Brian now makes all our bread, the use of quite a few recipes?A few from books, others of his very own invention, which encompass Granola Bread and Mega-Fiber Health Bread. He'll whip up such a unique breads if I request it, but his default loaf is an unadorned complete-wheat bread that I've dubbed

Brian's Basic Brown Bread

1. Dissolve 4 tsp. yeast in 1 3/4 c. warm (not hot) water.
2. Combine this in a large bowl with 3 1/2 c. whole-wheat flour, 1/4 c. honey (or brown sugar), 2 tsp. salt, 3 Tbsp. unsalted butter (or other oil), 1/2 c. wheat bran, and 2 Tbsp. wheat gluten. (You can leave out this ingredient, but the bread will rise much better with it.)
3. Knead the dough for 10 minutes.
4. Cover and allow to rise in a warm, moist environment for about an hour, or until the dough has roughly doubled in size. Brian usually puts it in the oven (switched off) with a damp cloth over top of the bowl and a pan of hot water underneath.
5. Punch down the dough, knead it again briefly, and divide it up into two loaf pans.
6. Return the pans to the warm, moist area and let the dough rise again until it puffs over the top of the pans.
7. Bake at 375°F for half an hour.

The ingredients for this bread cost us $1.92. We get three of the ingredients from the bulk bins at the Whole Earth Center: wheat bran ($1.28 per pound), wheat gluten ($5.46 per pound), and yeast ($4.59 per pound). We most recently bought whole-wheat flour and butter at the Shop-Rite: $2.99 for a 5-pound bag of flour, $1.99 for a pound of butter. The honey came from Costco, at an impressive price of $11.99 for a massive 5-pound jar, and the salt probably cost a penny or less. That $1.92 makes two loaves, and we probably get 15 slices from each loaf, so my two daily slices cost around 13 cents.

For my morning cocoa, but, we definitely pay more via the usage of cooking from scratch. That's due to the fact sugar and cocoa are of the factors I constantly insist on shopping for organic, for the reason that traditional techniques of growing them are so negative to the environment. Fortunately, we've presently found assets for each that, whilst nevertheless pricier than their traditional equivalents, are pretty a bit cheaper than what we've paid within the past. First, we were given a ten-pound sack of herbal sugar at Costco for simply $7.99, or around 80 cents a pound?Less than 1/2 what we used to pay at Trader Joe's. And then we found a half-pound bag of natural, Fair Trade

I make my cocoa with 1 teaspoon of organic, Fair Trade cocoa powder (4 cents), 1 teaspoon of organic sugar (1 cent), half a packet of artificial sweetener just to cut the sugar content a bit (less than 1 cent), a cup of skim milk (14 cents, since we got a really good deal on that at Costco as well), and a few drops of our homemade vanilla extract (about 1 cent, as I've estimated it costs about 50 cents per ounce to make). That's 21 cents per cup, while Swiss Miss packets bought in bulk cost only around 10 cents apiece. But my homemade stuff is lower in sugar, richer in nutrients, and, if I do say so myself, a lot tastier. I consider the extra 11 cents per cup to be money well spent.

So, all told, my morning breakfast costs around 35 cents: 13 for the bread, 11 for the cocoa, and 1 for a teaspoon or so of Blue Bonnet spread, our preferred margarine. And with all that nice, healthy fiber in the homemade bread, it's satisfying enough to keep me going until lunchtime. But if you can't be bothered to make your own bread and cocoa, you can make this same breakfast with store-bought ingredients, and the cost will be about the same.

By the way, the crossword puzzle shown at left in the photo is also part of my complete breakfast. It's the daily cryptic crossword from Best For Puzzles, which you can pick up here. Be warned that this is a British-style puzzle, so the clues are very different from what Americans are used to. If you've never solved a cryptic crossword before, check out this tutorial first. And be aware that you may encounter answers, like British TV shows or cities, that aren't familiar to most Yanks.