#it's flour yeast and valve oil that i know. im surprised i remembered rapid rise

[lemuel-apologist]

i want you to go on a journey with me. put yourself in these supposedly-$400 shoes. we're doing what my mom did every time the topic of groceries came up (updated, of course, for a modern audience. it's not 2012 anymore).

in this hypothetical, you are poor.

woah. crazy. bear with me. (i had to have my one, sorry.)

your name is not steve, because my stepdad doesn't know how to bake (he's a chef, not a baker, sorry steve. makes mean street corn, though). your name is liz. you come home from a long day of teaching somebody else's kids for not enough pay and not enough hours (definitely not enough to get benefits), slip off the company-mandated shoes that are wearing through again by the door (it's not worth it to buy actual shoe repair supplies, is it? that's so much money for a tube of gunk that'll look like shit. your second-oldest can sew. maybe she can sew it? it's not time to think about that now) and you go to make yourself and your kids (plural. you have five of them) something to eat when you realize you don't have bread. today is grocery day.

right. fuck. at least steve doesn't have the car today. your broken, shitty car that breaks down every five miles.

so you tell your oldest to watch the baby, pour some water under the hood of the car you can't afford to replace when it breaks down on the three mile drive to the grocery store and the produce market (the grocery store, so you don't have to pay extra for shopping at walgreens like you did when you didn't have a car at all), and you go in.

now, do you, behind the cart, 39-hours-a-week, five children, shoes broken as hell, buy a loaf of bread for (in 2024 prices) $1.42? or do you pay way more for the ingredients needed to make loaves of bread?

liz knows, in the forefront of her mind, that she has $15 to spend on groceries and supplies for the month. that includes diapers, wipes, food, and, yes, bread.

so, let's say liz does gather the ingredients to make bread. it's cheaper, right?

in the long run, yes. i'll be transparent. but in the immediate?

a two pound bag of flour, in 2024, costs $2.38. That's already more than a loaf of bread, but we'll roll with it. But, hey-- a 25 pound bag of flour supposedly costs $10.77.

you're liz. you're an expert at budgeting. you know which is more cost-effective. a 25lb bag will last longer and costs less, per pound and definitely per gram, than the 2lb bag. but it's not in your budget. if you get the 25lb. bag, you already can't get other food. no protein, no vegetables, nothing. you're committed to johnnycakes for the next month and now your kids are complaining of vitamin deficiencies. damn.

so you sigh, set the thought aside, think maybe when we have some more money. maybe we could save up. get the 2lb bag. that's barely enough to bake some cookies with, too.

but whatever. you tally it up in your head. of your fifteen dollars, you have $12.62 left.

for bread, you need a leavening agent. for white bread, that's yeast.

or, you remember, you could get yourself baking powder and make soda bread (or biscuits. there are a lot of quick breads out there). but which is cheaper?

Well, instant yeast is either $5.48 (jar), $1.88 (packet, name brand-- ew), or $1.14 (packet, store brand). the cheapest baking powder you see costs $1.98; the cheapest baking soda costs $0.87. you would need to have both to be able to properly rise your bread, right?

are you going to stand here and debate yeast versus baking powder? yeast bread versus quick bread? price over price over price over price? you have hungry kids at home. you're pretty sure your second-oldest is going to run into a doorknob hip-first or step on a rusty nail and you can't afford a doctor's visit. not this month. not after she got shingles. after all, you're debating bread.

so, yeast. you get yeast. are you going to get packets or a jar? a jar is more cost-effective than a bunch of packets, and you, liz, would know that. more bang for your buck. unfortunately, it's also more buck, but you're trying to be cost-effective... so you get the jar... put the packets back... look at your cart of ingredients... sigh... try to total it up... try not to panic... put the jar back when you think about the cost, because the cost reigns supreme; try not to think about the cost; try not to think about how you're not going to even have enough money for jelly... and that's all your oldest likes to eat on her sandwiches. it's the only way you can get her to eat them. and you could be more strict, sure, but she's having such a hard time with her birth mom that you really can't, not without losing her.

that's okay. maybe you can get some fruit from someone you know-- people at church are pretty nice, and someone always has extra fruit-- and try to teach her to make preserves. maybe. if you have the time. you have to teach piano lessons, after all, to supplement your income, and you are going to be late if you don't hurry this up.

if you're using yeast, you have to add in sugar, which you don't have at the house. you could subtract $2.12 if you get the cheapest possible option. maybe you could ask your weird vegan neighbor for coconut sugar, but-- then you're talking to your weird vegan neighbor, and who wants to do that? maybe you could go to the dollar store instead, if you're willing to go after piano lessons. mentally, set aside and subtract $1.25, plus tax. (can't forget tax. you live in florida, man.) fuck, maybe the store pricematches it. let's say that for the sake of the hypothetical.

all food is processed, you know. flour, yeast, margarine. and you think, passing the butter, that you could probably substitute in the margarine you have in the fridge, scant as it is, for the butter you need. the total money left in your budget is standing at 10.23. Not bad, not bad at all. Is your family eating meat this month, you wonder? no time for that. you're making bread.

you don't have to pay for water here. that's already in your utilities. you have salt in your spice cabinet and a thousand packets in a drawer somewhere. yay you. yay for never getting rid of condiment packets. and there's probably some shortening left over somewhere in your house, if you need to grease your old-as-time loaf pan that probably is rusted somewhere you can't see. can't afford a new one right now.

but let's say, for the sake of a calculation that im about to do, that liz does actually give in and buy more margarine here. that's another $1.24.

so, what's your total at, now? you have spent $6.01 (roughly; im not double-checking for a tumblr post, sorry) to make a loaf of bread.

but how much bread can you actually get out of this?

you have three packets of yeast. you need two per loaf of bread. if you want to be able to make three, you actually need to double the amount you're spending on yeast; or you can make a half loaf with ingredients left over, after which you could make a quick bread, like a soda bread (or another type of quick bread; i'm saying soda bread because that's one im super familiar with and im not about to bring making yeast breads like milk bread or challah into this, thanks), which would require you to have baking powder, baking soda, or another leavening agent in your house. and liz, you don't have those things in your house.

at most, you're getting one and a half loaves out of this, with flour, sugar, and butter left over. if you have eggs (which is another cost; but maybe you can dip into your funds for that, since you can make egg salad, scrambled eggs, fried rice, and so on), you could try making some sort of egg bread; you could make bread without yeast if you have the right ingredients; you could make tortillas; but do you have things to eat with that bread? with those tortillas? bread is fine, but you only have $8.99 left to spend and seven people to feed. dipping into your emergency kit means you don't have food to eat when a hurricane hits--

because ground beef? the most versatile meat option you can get at the store? that costs $4.24. lunch meat costs about the same these days, unless you're getting bologna.

so do you spend six dollars on bread ingredients with the knowledge that you'll have to dedicate the time to baking it and figuring out how to use the rest of what's left (or, if all else fails, letting your second-oldest bake unsupervised, knowing how she is with oven mitts and fires)? knowing you could make even more bread if you had the ten pound bag of flour and the jar of yeast? or do you buy a loaf of bread, buy enough food to keep your family full and nourished, and get to your piano lessons so you can also afford to keep your two youngest children in diapers?

y'know, my family has been poor for as long as they've been in america-- for even longer. 1696, the 1790s, the 1890s, now. maybe we know how to work the land; how to sew, how to bake, how to preserve. we learned how, because we wanted to, because we had to (was there a choice?). we know how to make do. most poor people do. it's a life of constant choices.

and sometimes you have to choose to buy the bread instead of making it.