Originally Posted by
Machka
My father has been using a bread machine to make his own bread for years. It takes him a few minutes to mix the ingredients and put it in the machine, and not that long to wash up after ... and he produces about one loaf of bread each week. He has created his own variation on a standard recipe, and will use extra bits and pieces for some variety (like throwing in a little flax seed, or ground up sunflower seeds, or I think he used the last bit of a whole grain porridge in there once, etc.). I believe his recipe also takes slightly sour milk ... so when the milk is starting to going bad, rather than dumping it, he uses it in the bread.
Sounds real close to what we do - We use half white / half wheat flour (if you use all wheat, it will be MUCH heartier than store-bought wheat bread) and we'll mix in flax seed & wheat berries. I have a friend who owns a bakery and will sell me 50-lb. sacks of flour and 2-lb. jars or yeast at wholesale. Once we got the recipe down, it only takes me about 5 minutes to throw the ingredients in the machine and hit the "start" button.
noisebeam, I really don't think the energy used by the machine & washing the utensils is more than the energy used by the machines at the commercial bakery, the factory that makes the plastic bags, the delivery truck that takes the loaf of bread to the store, and the gas used by the consumer who drives to and from the store to buy the bread, then throws away the plastic bag without recycling it...