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We don't make OR buy breads with any regularity. We tend to not eat bread products all that often. Once in a while biscuits, and occasionally, tortillas. Saltines when I make chili. But I'm not likely to start baking my own saltines, either.
Fried yard bird from a supermarket deli is cheap for a 8pc without the clean up. Now the best value for a single or two person max is a buffet. Man a person can get down at a buffet. Easier than cooking from scratch.
But one thing we hardly ever buy anymore is bread! So many comments include not wanting to bake bread. I bake every weekend, rolls, biscuits and breads to last us the week. And I love doing it! The night before I left home, 30+ years ago, I asked my mom (who, by the way, was a great baker and a great chef) to teach me to bake bread, and that's one of the best lessons I've ever had. Thanks, Mom!
These days we eat a low-salt diet, and it's simply impossible to find store-bought breads with low salt that still taste good (not no-salt!), so there's a practical side to it. But it also tastes so much better than any ready-made bread. And besides, kneading dough is like sculpting--you feel the creative process happening right in your hands. And while the dough is rising (twice), you can do other things. You don't have to stand around and watch it rise... When you bake frequently it becomes a matter of habit. I never measure anything anymore, I just "throw it together," except for when I'm trying a new recipe.
When raising my children, I baked some kind of bread almost every day. (Five boys can eat you out of house and home if you don't fill 'em up!) Bread, rolls, biscuits, cinnamon buns. I loved the feel of the dough when I kneaded it. Good way to get those aggressions out, too! And the smell of the dough rising just made me smile.
The five boys all have their own homes now, and their own families. They don't eat a lot of bread products. And arthritis makes it difficult for me to knead the dough and punch it down and knead it again. I don't eat as much bread either. Maybe it's because it doesn't taste the same as it did when I was making my own loaves.
I found baklava to be a royal pain to make from scratch. The cost of the ingredients plus all that work comes out to more that a piece of it would cost at the middle eastern grocery store.
Fried yard bird from a supermarket deli is cheap for a 8pc without the clean up. Now the best value for a single or two person max is a buffet. Man a person can get down at a buffet. Easier than cooking from scratch.
I sooo agree! I wish I could make good fried chicken, but all that oil stink up my clothes and hair and is just too tricky to dispose of. Then, when I try to make it, the batter on each chicken piece falls off and sticks to the bottom of the pan, making a stuck on burnt mess and the chicken ends up full of oil. Store deli fried chicken, fast food fried chicken and buffet fried chicken are usually affordable and tasty. Some are too salty though.
Hummus raises the question of just what "scratch" is. I prepare my own hummus; in fact, after having prepared my own I consider the store brands inedible. But I buy Garbanzos in a can as well as Tahini. When I use ground cumin I take it from a jar. I have cooked chick peas and found them no better than the cans. I've never considered making Tahini. My lemons and garlic are fresh.
Do I make hummus from scratch?
I have made hummus as well (tahini and chickpeas - yep) and nothing I make even touches Sabra. I won't eat any other kind now.
Chicken or turkey pot pies. Very delicious and warming on cold winter nights. So work intensive if homemade.
Oh my nothing can beat homemade chicken pot pie! Love love love it. Don't make it often, but it doesn't last long when I do!
(I don't like peas in mine...and most store-bought has peas...so doesn't bother me at all to make it from scratch.)
I don't fry either. Too messy. Okay, I'm not very good at it either. I want to get a frybaby...
I enjoy puttering around the kitchen so I dabble in this and that just for fun. I can't think of anything I'd NOT try to make just because I want to buy it. But on a regular basis, I'm very busy with my job so my time off is better spent recreationally than slaving over a kitchen to make the food that will keep us alive.
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When you bake frequently it becomes a matter of habit. I never measure anything anymore, I just "throw it together," except for when I'm trying a new recipe.
