Sitting down to write this post actually required a lot of math first. I majored in Creative Writing, so I hope you appreciate my sacrifice.
Once in awhile I get the urge to figure out just how thrifty it is (or if it is) for me to bake things at home instead of buying them. I especially got this urge lately because to make bagels I bought a jar of barley malt syrup that seemed terribly expensive. When you break it down to cost per batch of bagels, though, it isn’t so bad.
To do these calculations, I looked at the price for Sarah Lee bagels at the grocery store I usually shop at, and broke it down both by cost per bagel and cost per ounce, to account for the difference in size between my bagels and storebought bagels.
The recipe I used was Bruce Ezzell’s bagel recipe, which is my current favorite.
Some of the ingredient prices reflect what I actually paid on a recent shopping trip, and some of them I looked up on Wal-Mart’s website for a general estimate (and in the case of the barley malt syrup, Amazon).
Sarah Lee bagels: 6 count package, 20 oz, $ 4.39
This breaks down to: 73 cents per bagel and 22 cents per oz.
Homemade bagels:
1 tablespoon honey: $ 0.13
1 tablespoon barley malt syrup: $ 0.18
3 g yeast: $ 0.15 (I buy it in a jar, which is much cheaper than packets)
baking soda: $ 0.02 (hardly worth counting)
kosher salt: $ 0.07 (also hardly worth counting)
bread flour: $ 1.05
whole wheat flour: $ 0.28
Grand total: $1.88
This yields 16 bagels that weigh about 43 oz, which is 12 cents per bagel, and 4 cents per oz.
Which means that making bagels is over 5 times cheaper than buying them at the store, although making them takes awhile, and the savings wouldn’t make a very good hourly wage. There is no comparison in the taste department, though. Homemade bagels definitely win there.
My Daily Bread 
No offense, but what about all the time you spent making those bagels, and the cost of the electricity That all should be taken in in accounting the cost. The big bakeries do.
I understand what you’re saying, but basically, I’m too lazy to do that math. “The big bakeries do”, but I’m not a big bakery. 🙂 I did address the time issue – basically, not very good wages, but the better quality is worth it (and baking is a hobby I enjoy – how much do you spend on your hobbies?)
Thank you for your sacrifice. 🙂 I think I might try making bagels!
When my son was younger, he read “bagels” as “bag gals” on the Panera Bread box at a morning ladies’ Bible study. The ladies thought he was saying “bad gals.” That become the joke when anyone brought bagels for the study. “Did you bring us some bad gals?” They still remind him of that.
How funny!
I really do recommend trying making them at least once.