It costs more to make your own bread?

Weird, mine genuinely doesn't go up to 300 except on the cleaning mode or the grill.

Also, you said how are people cooking at 180 - I cook everything at 180: roasts, tray bakes, casserole, flapjacks, cheesecake - everything!

c! I don’t know if it actually gets to 300 in there but it is pretty hot when you open the door. I can’t make bread when there’s a heatwave 😂

Amusingly, I hauled my breadmaker out this morning - I think it's the change in weather and I just want lovely fresh bread. We eat a lot of high qualiy sourdough so I won't be abandoning that at all, but I do like it when I'm using the breadmaker for a fluffy loaf a couple of times a week. Especially as DD, who has intolerances and is fussy, is FINALLY starting to eat bread again but currently only the crappy Hovis stuff so if I can switch her to lovely home baked bread, huge win.

I agree with other posters - you shouldn't need 40 minutes to heat up a cast iron pot. I would think 20 would be fine, especialyl ifyou put it in when you turned the oven on.

Maybe this is the year I experiment with different breads in the breadmaker!

I use a bread maker. It kneads, heats for the rises, and bakes. You check it during the knead and see if the dough ball looks like it should and adjust accordingly. You have to add ingredients in the order specified, usually liquids first then dry with yeast on top. The breads I make with it are nice and light. I add a little more water if I'm doing something like whole wheat or rye. I also might add some vital wheat gluten, that helps the bread not be dense. I also use good quality flours, it really does make for better taste and texture. I make a loaf or two a week.

In the winter I might just use it for kneading and bake in the oven.

I pay £1 for strong bread flour and use my sourdough starter.

The oven is occasionally used strategically using sourdough discard (English muffins/cookies etc)

I don't think it's more expensive, but regardless it's a completely different product

ETA: that's for TWO loaves, as I bake 500g loaves.

300 on my oven is the self clean, when it turns everything to ash.

Are you talking c or f?

@Ironfloor269 I started out with a Panasonic bread maker and the machine did everything from kneading to baking but I didn't like the hole from it baking around the paddle. I used it to combine all ingredients including seeds, then let it knead the bread then I turned it out shaped it, put it into a loaf tin, covered it until it rose a bit then baked it. I am going back at least 15 years but I didn't knead it.

I can't knead bread, it hurts my hands and the loaves/rolls I make now are more of a pull up, stretch then fold over x 3 times and I do this every 30 minutes three times. I make a poolish the day before. My oven is 240 and I have a steel tray in there to bake on but I make 8 small baguettes style rolls or 2 loaves so I make double what OP makes so the cost of the oven is technically halved. Sometimes I cook them for less time to make part baked ones and freeze them. My bread flour is £1.22 for a 1.5kg and I use 1kg per batch at 81p per kilo. Yeast, salt and water. Nothing else.

A normal loaf of bread can be as cheap at 75p but it has a lot of preservatives and enhancers in. A nice loaf will cost over £2 now but if you went to a bakery and bought a freshly made loaf it would more likely be double that. I like making my own.

No not at all. I LIVED my bread maker. Just put the ingredients in, in order & the paddled mixed it. Beautiful bread, the avocado and cheese loaf was amazing too!

but I eat low carb now to avoid taking medication for diabetes, so I very reluctantly gave it to my friend 🥹

But if you shell out for a breadmaker you have to account for that in the cost too? It's fine if you make a loaf a day and the breadmaker works for 10 years before it breaks and the bread is amazing. Breadmaker is definitely a fooly purchase if you use it once in a blue moon and it doesn't even make great bread.... I throw the bread in when the oven is already hot from doing other things. Maybe try and time your cooking of bread around other baking / meal prep so that the thermonuclear heat isn't wasted!

I stopped using a breadmaker as the fresh bread was so delicious that the entire loaf would be gone within a few hours of being made (that's with the family sharing, not just me). So we all ate too much bread and put on too much weight. It's easier to resist temptation with bland pappy shop-bought bread.

Thanks OP. Have you ever tried it with gluten free flour?

Personally I'd use the time heating the oven/pot to cook something else, so the oven isn't wasted. I use to cook multiple loaves and cakes at the same time so that I could make best use of the oven. I'd then freeze them all cut into small pieces.

I bake mine in a Dutch oven at 300 (I know! But it’s sourdough and it works, fantastic rise every time) and it only takes 20 mins to preheat, I don’t understand why yours would need 40 mins.

Getting sidetracked but how is anyone baking bread at 180?? That’s gentle reheating as far as I’m concerned

Well yes but only because I make gluten free and the best flour is caputo fioreglut which costs about £9 per kg. But it’s amazing!

I used a bread maker throughout the packed lunch years and it was vastly cheaper than supermarket bread.

Can you bake bread in an air fryer?

I'd always assumed the 40 mins was the time it needed to heat the Dutch oven as it is so heavy. But maybe it is the time for the bread to rise after it has been shaped?

I've made this loaf without a Dutch oven using a tray of water in the bottom of the oven to make the steamy environment. I found the instructions in the footnotes of a recipe somewhere.

I have an old, shit gas oven and it never gets to 240C. My Dutch oven bread tends to have a very thick crust. Anyone know why?

I use a breadmaker we put a loaf on every 2 days id say. As others have said.
Flour. £0.33
salt. . £0.01
water. £0.01
Oil. £0.10
yeast. £0.05
Electricity £0.05
total of. £0.56 a loaf.

Even compared to a hovis loaf at £1.50 (had to google that as not bought one in years) thats cheaper.

Tastes way better and better nutrients Keeps ypu full for longer.
Should be compared to a artisan loaf at £4.00 a piece

I also googled cost of running a breadmaker

How to calculate your own cost
Find your electricity price: Look at your last energy bill for the cost per kWh.
Check your bread maker's energy use: Your appliance manual or a "kill-a-watt" gadget can provide the energy usage in kWh for a standard cycle.
Multiply: (kWh per cycle) x (cost per kWh) = cost per loaf.
A bread maker costs pence to run in electricity, though this varies with the model, cycle time, and your local electricity price per kWh. For example, Which? estimated that two loaves a week would cost between £7.53 and £11.66 annually under the October 2023 energy price cap

Has anyone had success in air fryer? And have recipe they could share?

Another one who would never heat the dutch oven that long. Jim Lahey (the guy who first popularised this method) says to bring it up to 500 degrees and gives no time for that.

You can buy an oven thermometer, they are not very expensive and would take the guesswork out of it.

Those who make bread in a bread maker, do you knead the dough before putting in? And if not, doesn’t the loaf come out dense and heavy?

I don’t know it’s because my bread maker wasn’t good quality but when I made loaves in there, they took far less time than in the oven and came out dense and heavy.

So I gave the bread maker away.

I noticed OP gets her flour in Aldi.
Years ago, when I made bread regularly, I did a flour comparison.
One day I bought Tesco Value flour, very cheap, to make my bread.
The next day I bought Waitrose organic etc, more than twice the price.
I found the taste of the bread made from Waitrose flour much superior to the cheapest flour.
It's something worth considering.

180 is not hot enough - I cook bread on about 220-230 (Celsius!). It is always really good.

For the airfryer I used the 2 tin method..so 2 x 1lb loaf tins with the dough and a couple of ice cubes in one, with another tin on top. Cooked at 200 for 15 mins with "lid" and then top tin removed and another 15 mins at 200. I used a meat thermometer to check the internal temp and was done. The lid recreated the steamy/sealed atmosphere of the dutch oven. Loaf not quite as good but still better than anything sliced/upf from.the supermarket

The warm up time sounds way over the top for a cast iron pot, but even so, the cost is likely cheaper than a comparable shop bought loaf.

You could experiment with a shorter pre-heat, also heat the pot when you're already using the oven for something else.

But unless you're on a very tight budget, as you don't make this bread very often, the cost is probably not worth worrying about.