With the price of wheat so high

[Quiver0f10]

is it still worth it to buy a grain grinder? I was borrowing one from a friend, but she needed it back and so I have been buying bread, white for them and organic whole wheat for me and DH.

 

I have another friend selling a barely used Nutrimill at a decent price, but with wheat at $37/50# bag I don't know if it's worth it or not. I do prefer to make our own as I feel the wheat is better for us all and I couldn't afford to buy organic whole wheat bread for my family :eek: With the warmer weather will will be eating more sandwiches and using more buns for burgers and such.

 

What do you think? I hate spending so much $ when times are tight, but we plan to use our stimulus check for the purchase, if that matters LOL.

 

Thanks! :)

[j.griff]

Hmmmmm... I have entertained the thought of baking my own sprouted wheat bread before. But I'd still need a grinder, and I'm dis inclined to have yet another gadget- however wholesome it may be. Also, I have decided I'd rather buy loaves of bread than put all the time and energy into baking it- especially since we are moving to a warmer climate and I want to save on the cooling bill. :D

[Kelli in TN]

I have not seen an increase in price here. How much increase have you seen?

 

What actually kills my budget is the fuel to drive two towns away and way back in the boondocks to the quaint little Mennonite store where I buy my wheat. It is the closest place to buy it, but it feels like an adventure every time I go.

[Audrey]

$37 for 50#??!! Hey, if you're willing to come up and get some, I'll sell you 50# of ORGANIC wheat for the low, low price of just 29.95. Act now and I'll throw in three dozen free-range, organic eggs for free.

 

Seriously, I'm up to my ears at the moment in eggs, and I just wish we got even half of that $37/50# for the wheat. :sad:

[langfam]

I've seen an increase in wheat prices, but the homemade bread is sooooo good that I can't imagine going back to store-bought!

 

Here's a good article that convinced me.

http://www.nutritionlifestyles.com/homemill.htm

 

I have a really good bread recipe that is made with Extra Virgin Olive Oil....oh-so-good for your heart and boy, is it delicious!!

 

If you get your mill and want the recipe, I'll be happy to share.

 

I pay $47 for hard red organic and $48 for hard white organic.

I belong to a co-op so shipping is minimal and we get a discount too.

 

http://www.breadbeckers.com/

 

Check to see if there's a co-op in your area.

[Quiver0f10]

The price went for $22 to $37 in just a few months. I am lucky that I can email my order to the co-op lady and pick up is not far from my house. Thanks for the replies and I'd love the recipe!

[JFSinIL]

won't the price of the store-bought bread go up, too? Isn't it all "relative"?

The homemade bread from home ground wheat will still taste better - for me the choice would be on whether or not I had the time to bake that much bread for that many people each week (or do you have other bread bakers in the house?)

[Guest Virginia Dawn]

The price of unbleached all-purpose flour in our grocery store is over 2.50 a 5lb bag now. Whole wheat is outrageous. The increase in price has been greater and faster than gasoline!

[Quiver0f10]

Thanks for helping me think it through. I am going to get the grinder. Now to save for a DLX :D

[langfam]

Whole Wheat Honey (2 pound recipe)

 

11.5 oz warm water

1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/3 cup honey

mill 3 cups hard grain ( I use 1 hard red: 2 hard white-- yields approx. 5cups flour, use all flour)

2 TBSP lecithin

1 tsp gluten

1 TBSP yeast

 

Hope you like it!:)

[Quiver0f10]

Whole Wheat Honey (2 pound recipe)

 

11.5 oz warm water

1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/3 cup honey

mill 3 cups hard grain ( I use 1 hard red: 2 hard white-- yields approx. 5cups flour, use all flour)

2 TBSP lecithin

1 tsp gluten

1 TBSP yeast

 

Hope you like it!:)

 

Thanks! :D

[Colleen]

When people disparage "store-bought bread" they are talking a whole different genre of bread than some of what's out there. When I bake bread, the price per loaf saves me very little, if anything, over the excellent, high-quality bread that's available at numerous bakeries. And yes, they're considering prices hikes but those hikes are actually more tolerable than what I'd be looking at if I bought wheat or flour myself.

[langfam]

Jean,

 

I'm a dope....I've done this before too....I gave this recipe to a friend and made the exact same mistake in the recipe. Water should be 12.5 oz. Basically it's the mark between 1 1/2 and 1 2/3 cup.

 

Whole Wheat Honey (2 pound recipe)

 

12.5 oz warm water

1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/3 cup honey

mill 3 cups hard grain ( I use 1 hard red: 2 hard white-- yields approx. 5cups flour, use all flour)

2 TBSP lecithin

1 tsp gluten

1 TBSP yeast

 

Gee, I hope you haven't already made a batch of bread.....

[Quiver0f10]

Jean,

 

I'm a dope....I've done this before too....I gave this recipe to a friend and made the exact same mistake in the recipe. Water should be 12.5 oz. Basically it's the mark between 1 1/2 and 1 2/3 cup.

 

Whole Wheat Honey (2 pound recipe)

 

12.5 oz warm water

1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/3 cup honey

mill 3 cups hard grain ( I use 1 hard red: 2 hard white-- yields approx. 5cups flour, use all flour)

2 TBSP lecithin

1 tsp gluten

1 TBSP yeast

 

Gee, I hope you haven't already made a batch of bread.....

 

Thank you! I hope to thy this this weekend :)

[Nestof3]

When people disparage "store-bought bread" they are talking a whole different genre of bread than some of what's out there. When I bake bread, the price per loaf saves me very little, if anything, over the excellent, high-quality bread that's available at numerous bakeries.

 

Really? Even the junky Nature's Own costs over $2.00 a loaf. I have never found any bread made without hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup and with whole wheat bread that costs the same as homemade bread. Perhaps it's where we live. I am also not willing to drive to a separate store just for bread. For me, it's so easy just to throw everything in my bread machine (it takes about 5 minutes).

[Jennifer in MI]

Really? Even the junky Nature's Own costs over $2.00 a loaf. I have never found any bread made without hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup and with whole wheat bread that costs the same as homemade bread. Perhaps it's where we live. I am also not willing to drive to a separate store just for bread. For me, it's so easy just to throw everything in my bread machine (it takes about 5 minutes).

 

This made me wonder exactly how much I spend on a loaf of bread. My recipe calls for:

 

Wheat

salt

olive oil

yeast

lecithin

sugar

gluten flour

 

I bought 25 pounds of wheat berries for under $10. (Apparently that's cheap according to what the rest of you pay! I hope that doesn't go up!) That makes 60 cups (very approximate) of flour. I need 3 1/2 cups/recipe. So, that 25# will make 17 loaves of bread. So, the wheat is 58 cents/loaf.

 

Salt and sugar are so minimal they're hardly worth adding into the cost.

 

Olive oil - I use about 1 t. So, maybe 10 cents/loaf?

 

Yeast - I think it'd be about 10 cents as well (I buy in bulk).

 

Lecithin is maybe another 5 cents.

 

Gluten flour. No idea. I bought a 5 # bag about 6 months ago and it's still 7/8 full. so, maybe 5 cents.

 

Grand total per loaf is 88 cents (and I think I'm estimating high).

 

For me to buy a loaf of bread without any of the bad stuff around me, I'd be spending at least $4/loaf. So, in my neck of the woods, it's certainly cheaper!!!

[Retired]

I have read this on several souces. It seems because farmers can make more growing corn, fewer are growing wheat. That is leading to decrease supply for the world. One source believe it will lead to famines in 3rd world countries and extreme prices in the future for us. Google for some article if interested. Some say the price of bushel is stabling out others believe it will only get worse, especially as the the demand of ethanol goes up.

[Audrey]

This made me wonder exactly how much I spend on a loaf of bread. My recipe calls for:

 

Wheat

salt

olive oil

yeast

lecithin

sugar

gluten flour

 

I bought 25 pounds of wheat berries for under $10. (Apparently that's cheap according to what the rest of you pay! I hope that doesn't go up!) That makes 60 cups (very approximate) of flour. I need 3 1/2 cups/recipe. So, that 25# will make 17 loaves of bread. So, the wheat is 58 cents/loaf.

 

Salt and sugar are so minimal they're hardly worth adding into the cost.

 

Olive oil - I use about 1 t. So, maybe 10 cents/loaf?

 

Yeast - I think it'd be about 10 cents as well (I buy in bulk).

 

Lecithin is maybe another 5 cents.

 

Gluten flour. No idea. I bought a 5 # bag about 6 months ago and it's still 7/8 full. so, maybe 5 cents.

 

Grand total per loaf is 88 cents (and I think I'm estimating high).

 

For me to buy a loaf of bread without any of the bad stuff around me, I'd be spending at least $4/loaf. So, in my neck of the woods, it's certainly cheaper!!!

 

To be fair, you need to calculate the energy to bake the bread, too (e.g. hydro, electric, whatever). You can do that by looking up what your oven expends in KW/hr, then multiply by the time it takes to bake (e.g. half hour is .5), then multiply that by the rate you are charged by your service company.

 

It's still not going to get you to the $4 mark, but you might be surprised (or not) at how much it adds to the cost of a loaf.

[Audrey]

I have read this on several souces. It seems because farmers can make more growing corn, fewer are growing wheat. That is leading to decrease supply for the world. One source believe it will lead to famines in 3rd world countries and extreme prices in the future for us. Google for some article if interested. Some say the price of bushel is stabling out others believe it will only get worse, especially as the the demand of ethanol goes up.

 

You know... this really isn't true. In *some* areas farmers *might* be planting more corn in a season instead of wheat, but they are two completely different crops and require very different soil conditions and heat units to grow successfully. Also, they figure quite differently in a crop rotation. Corn leeches a heck of a lot of nitrogen, so it needs to be followed by a nitrogen fixing crop, like wheat or barley. There are an awful lot of N. American farmers who can't grow corn (as a crop, which is vastly dissimilar to growing it in your garden). Corn requires a certain heat unit factor and certain soil conditions that simply do not exist in some areas.

 

Ethanol may be a small factor in trends to rotate corn as opposed to another similar crop, but it isn't a direct competition to wheat. Personally, I think the ethanol fad will wear out before it gets too far off the ground. It is enormously expensive to process and demand just isn't there to support it. There have been several attempts to get ethanol plants going in my province, for example, and the feasibility studies barely support their viability, if at all. IMO, ethanol is not the be-all-end-all in our search for alternative fuel sources.

 

Edited to add: Corn isn't the only crop that can processed into ethanol either. It just happens to be one of the ones with the highest price per bushel at the moment.

[*anj*]

When I bake bread, the price per loaf saves me very little, if anything, over the excellent, high-quality bread that's available at numerous bakeries.

 

To be fair, you need to calculate the energy to bake the bread, too (e.g. hydro, electric, whatever).

 

Good points. But I bake 3 loaves at a time, which means more bread baked for the same amount of energy output. I'd love to bake 5 at a time if my oven would hold the pans. We have some local places that sell fresh whole wheat bread that looks good/has wholesome ingredients, but I seriously doubt that they're grinding their own wheat, so the quality isn't the same.

 

I sell my bread for $5/loaf and although that seems like an obscene amount of money to me, I know that specialty bakeries would charge more than that for a loaf of bread as wholesome as mine (freshly milled flour, Celtic Sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, raw honey.)

[Jennifer in MI]

To be fair, you need to calculate the energy to bake the bread, too (e.g. hydro, electric, whatever). You can do that by looking up what your oven expends in KW/hr, then multiply by the time it takes to bake (e.g. half hour is .5), then multiply that by the rate you are charged by your service company.

 

It's still not going to get you to the $4 mark, but you might be surprised (or not) at how much it adds to the cost of a loaf.

 

Didn't even think about that!!! But, I do make about six loaves at a time. I think I have the oven on for about 45 minutes. Quite honestly, I have NO idea how much that costs, nor do I have the time to figure it out right now! Someday I will though!

[Ravin]

I make my own bread for special occasions. I'd love to have the time/energy/will to make it all the time, but with the increase in cost of whole wheat flour, short of also investing in a grinder (and a solar oven because I am NOT baking even weekly in my house in summer, not with the A/C jacking the bill up as much as it already does and our crummy inefficient electric oven), I doubt it'd be worth our while.

 

I can get Aunt Hattie's 100% Whole Grain Whole Wheat at Wal-mart for about $2/loaf, or TJ's 100% Whole Wheat for about the same or slightly less. Neither has HFCS or hydrogenated oil in it.

[JennyB]

am waiting to put an order in to Walton feed in may for a bulk truck order for more wheat and just received word that they are not even stocking wheat until the price goes down again. So... the cheapest wheat that I can find so far is a farmer in Nebraska will sell me a 50# bag of white wheat for $30. And then shipping was the same cost as the wheat. So if any one knows where I can get wheat around the St. Louis MO area. Let me know. I miss my homeade wheat products. Love my Nutrimill though!

 

Jenny

[Kelli in TN]

am waiting to put an order in to Walton feed in may for a bulk truck order for more wheat and just received word that they are not even stocking wheat until the price goes down again. So... the cheapest wheat that I can find so far is a farmer in Nebraska will sell me a 50# bag of white wheat for $30. And then shipping was the same cost as the wheat. So if any one knows where I can get wheat around the St. Louis MO area. Let me know. I miss my homeade wheat products. Love my Nutrimill though!

 

Jenny

 

Okay, you are scaring me. Now I think I may need to make the trek to the little Mennonite store and buy up all I can soon.

[langfam]

Prices are high because:

Our wheat supply is at it's lowest. I read increase foreign demand. I think we sold too much to Asia this year. Also, farmers are going to corn because of government subsidies for ethanol. Higher oil prices affects cost of transporting wheat. Also, bad weather.

 

On another note, price of milk.....$4.78 at Wal-Mart!!

[Jodi-FL]

for Bread Beckers, and at our last delivery, Brad Becker told me the price increase was because countries in the other half of the world who just had their wheat harvest had a bust. Same for those countries south of the equator, so now (according to him) the USA is the sole provider of wheat for the world.

 

Our prices have increased by $10 a 6gal. (45#) bucket just since last month.

 

Add to that, the fire at the Savannah sugar processing plant (our source for Sucanat/Savannah Gold all natural, low-refined sugar) and it's a tough business for the Beckers and others to be in right now.

 

still, no one in my family of 9 has been sick since we started milling our own 7 years ago.....

[langfam]

I'm in bed just about to fall asleep when I don't know how this thought comes to me...you didn't list the amount of salt for the recipe! Then I can't go back to sleep, so here I am telling you how much salt you'll need to use 1 1/2 teaspoon.

 

Whole Wheat Honey (2 pound recipe)

 

12.5 oz warm water

1/3 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil

1/3 cup honey

mill 3 cups hard grain ( I use 1 hard red: 2 hard white-- yields approx. 5cups flour, use all flour)

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 TBSP lecithin

1 tsp gluten

1 TBSP yeast

 

Good night. I can sleep now.....

[Robin in Tx]

The reason why other countries have bought up so much of our wheat, driving up the costs, is becaue there were crop failures in those other countries, but also (mainly) because the value of our dollar is down. It's a bargain to them.

 

Robin

[Audrey]

for Bread Beckers, and at our last delivery, Brad Becker told me the price increase was because countries in the other half of the world who just had their wheat harvest had a bust. Same for those countries south of the equator, so now (according to him) the USA is the sole provider of wheat for the world.

 

 

 

I swear I'm not trying to be a jerk, and I'm not trying to disparage your source, but I have to comment on this because it is completely false. The US is not, nor has it ever been, the "sole" supplier of wheat in the world. The US *is* the leading supplier of wheat with an average of around 28 million tonnes of wheat exported every year, but Canada, Australia and the EU *each* export around 15 million tonnes -- between the 3 representing around 45 million tonnes. On top of that Argentina is an up and coming major exporter of wheat (somewhere in the neighbourhood of 9 million tonnes in recent years). (source here)

 

Yes, all over the globe, wheat production has been less than usual, but there are many environmental factors at play, not just economic & political ones. Altogether, we're getting a glitch in the supply chain. It *is* going to bring wheat prices up, but remember that the wheat price to producer has changed very, very little in the past 40 years, while input cost have risen exponentially. (sources here and here)

 

I admit I'm coming at this from a producer perspective. I'm not going to bemoan what is, in the historical scope of commodity prices, a small adjustment. We've had very cheap food products for a very long time. Some farmers have been paying the difference themselves, the hard way. I'm sure it's different for the Yank farmers because there are huge subsidies, whereas here there are not.

 

Yet, as much as I like getting a better price for wheat, I'm not going to celebrate it either, because you can be fairly sure that high wheat prices will not last. They will readjust, not necessarily as low as before, but they will drop again.

[Quiver0f10]

I just came across this on another board I visit:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7284196.stm

[*anj*]

There was an interesting bit on the price of rice on that site, Jean. It's no wonder because the other day I was putting my grain order together and saw that the price of a pail of brown rice is through the roof.

[KayT]

I order my wheat from Bobs Red Mill. The shipping is very reasonable. A few weeks ago I ordered 4 - 25 lbs bags and the shipping was a little over $16.00. I was very pleased with my order and the shipping was fast!

I think the website is www.bobsredmill.com .

[KayT]

http://www.bobsredmill.com/catalog/index.php?action=showproducts&category_ID=28

 

The above link is to the bulk page and the wheat is at the bottom of the page.

 

Organic hard white berries 25# $19.08

Organic hard red berries 25# $16.14

 

Soft white wheat berries 25# $14.88

 

I notice the prices have gone up a bit. When I ordered a few weeks go I paid a little over $10 for 25# of the soft white, but its still cheaper than the $28. dollars a bag the last I checked at the health food store.