Stop... Purchasing.. BREAD AND PIZZA DOUGH!! (Should I make it, or buy it?)

One of the best ideas my Mom has ever had, was for our Wedding, to not create a Registry.

She had a good reason.


My brother got married 2 years before I did, and long story short, there were quite a few doubles of Glassware, Stainless Steel Cooking Sets & you name it - so my Mom purchased them from my sister in law, and passed them onto us for our first nest together.
Being that my husband & I never lived away from our parents & after the Wedding was the first time we shared a new place besides our bedrooms with siblings, we essentially didn't have a single thing we needed to live together - (well there was his Memory Foam Pillow, but you get my point.)

What's left of this loaf!

So we started from that point with the decision to not create a Registry, but of course this led to phone calls from all our guests asking 'So where are you guys Registered' - so this led us, to brainstorm all of our poetic skills to compose what would be inserted on a separate card that was placed along with our invitation (I have more details on this rendezvous on 'My 3 G Wedding Blog) and read simply that we long for our families presence more than anything, but here are our particular interests -> Markets & Big Retail Stores. With 150 friends, family members & all sorts of loved ones, we were absolutely overwhelmed with the generosity of everyone who showered us with everything we need for our first 6 months together. This is what leads me to my point: the gift cards we received I purchased all kinds of baking goods, hardly knowing the difference between self rising flour & bakers flour, and what bakers sugar was vs. standard sugar vs. brown sugar. (We'll chat yeast later, that's it's own arena) So here I am, a completely unexperienced, yet fully stocked and determined pre-chef. This allowed me to tinker around having quite a few baking disasters, ruined Pyrex Glassware, smoke alarms sounding BUT in the end, proving to myself that learning to bake & cook essential things that we pay for daily (Bread, Bagels, Tortillas, etc.) is really a waste of hard earned money.
I've heard, from my more on the go pals 'My time is just not worth making all that; eh, bread has to rise, yeast has to double, bleh...' But my question I ask immediately to them, and ask to you - is your hard earned money worth paying someone else to do something so simple?  
When I see pre-made items at the store, I see dollar bill signs flying everywhere. Almost 5 $ for a loaf of bread? When in approximately 1.5 hrs, from start to finish I can make appx. 8 loaves for that much! (And I am not talking nutritionally deprived white bread here; think more Wheat Germ & Flax Seed Whole Honey Wheat)
But don't get me wrong - you have to use discretion here and understand basic math when doing calculations. You should always compare items by their oz, because this is how you're being charged. We've all been victims of shopping at large Warehouse style shopping centers, where we think the larger package = a better deal, then you hit the smaller stores and you see you really paid $.40 cents an oz, but bought tons and tons of it. There are truly just some things not worth making at home... and this was a lesson learned hard.


The title of my blog came from being in line at a market, seeing a couple purchase all kinds of prepared foods (some are negotiable in my book) baked goods, pizza dough, oh you name it! In this huge cart that I waited about 5 minutes over, there wasn't anything they purchased to prepare their own food -
I wanted to say to the woman 'That prepared polenta, is almost 3.99 & it's only 3 - 4 servings. Buy a 5 lb bag of Cornmeal, and you'll be making all sorts of variations of Mushroom, Heavy Cream & Aged Cheddar Polenta, Corn Dogs, Fried Fish Coating, Corn bread - you name it! (More to come soon on all the things I do with a bag of Corn Meal) "And that bread, wow heart healthy - very fancy, but almost 5.00! You could make around 8 loaves for that!" Then I would be inclined to finish with "Someone once told me if Tortillas have more than 3 ingredients, you lose authenticity - Can you pronounce half of those chemicals? Make it at home!" So instead of making myself out to be some over opinionated yipster, I decided to take it home with me and thank God for the blessing of my interest to want to be different. See you guys soon! - BCB