A few weeks ago I ordered some new bakeware from King Arthur Flour.  I’d always wanted to try some of their bread mixes so I gave into temptation and ordered a few.  I’d never made sourdough bread so I was excited about their Alaskan Sourdough Yeast Bread mix.

In addition to the contents of the box I needed water and oil.  I followed the instructions and put all the ingredients in the pan of my Zojirushi bread machine.

The bread looked great when it came out and it tasted pretty great too.  It had a lovely sourdough flavor and was pleasantly chewy.

This was a real winner and it made me think about making sourdough bread on a regular basis.  That would mean buying sourdough starter or making starter from scratch.  The Zojirushi actually has a setting to make sourdough starter so that would be fine.  However starter has to be fed and maintained.  I wonder how much time and effort that takes?  Hmmm . . . I’ll have to do some more investigation.

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As I gazed at this box of bread mix in Walmart, I realized that  I’d never purchased bread mixes for my machine.  Once we were given a few by a friend, but that had been years ago.  I couldn’t even remember how the bread turned out.

Were mixes any good?  Would I like them?  Would I be able to taste the difference?

I decided to try it out.

The bread looked and tasted fine. I thought it was fantastic toasted with peanut butter on it.  The Man of the House like it but said it had a “funny texture.”

Making bread with a bread machine isn’t hard.  I make sandwich bread about once a week.  It takes about 15 minutes including cleanup.  However using a mix was much easier and faster.

The Man of the House and I haven’t done a firm workup on how much it costs to make a loaf of bread.  We buy our flour, yeast, salt and sugar at Costco.  Our rough estimate is that it costs us about fifty cents to make a loaf of bread.  Even if  it’s double that, a mix is much more expensive than making a loaf from scratch.

So this mix gets points for ease of use and bread quality.  The cost is reasonable for a mix, but more expensive than making bread from scratch.

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