7-grain torpedo

One of the great dilemmas with bread baking is the cost benefit ratio.
Here are some of the "pros" for baking bread. It tastes amazing, seriously, nothing tastes quite like bread fresh from the oven. It makes the whole house smell great; who needs scented candles or potpourri anyway. It's usually cheaper than buying bread from the store. It's also satisfying to make a loaf.
Now for the "cons". It takes a lot of time to make a good loaf (see bottom for some of the tricks for making great bread), not much active time, but a decent amount of passive time. It doesn't last nearly as long as store-bought bread which means you would have to make it every other day or third day to have some on hand. And perhaps the greatest con (which is also a pro) is that when you have a fresh loaf of bread you want to eat the whole thing.
Overall we have concluded that if we were to make bread to save money it just doesn't add up. We could (and have) eaten a whole loaf of bread right out of the oven before, so it doesn't stay around for long. That doesn't mean that we don't make bread anymore, because it's hard to resist its siren song, but we just don't kid ourselves into thinking we're being economical by doing so. Here are some pictures of a 7-grain torpedo loaf that we made, whole grain and incredibly tasty. WooHoo.

P.S. There are a couple of ways of making yeast breads. In the Bread cookbooks we own or have perused they recommend using a dough "starter" to increase the flavor of the bread. A starter takes all the wet ingredients with half of the dry ingredients, whiskes them together and lets them sit at room temperature to ferment. This give the natural bacteria in all flours the opportunity to out-compete the yeasts for a little bit. Bacteria and their by-products are what give breads their distinct flavors while yeast provides lift and airyness. Many bread recipes in non-Bread Baking cookbooks advocate using much more yeast and leave out the starter to save on time. This starter takes a little more thought ahead of time, but the better taste is worth the effort.