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Where I live, rent has almost quadrupled since 2010 while wages for many jobs have stayed pretty much the same.
Yeah 10 years ago a qualified tradesmen in my industry was paid average 45 an hour, now that same level of experience is about 48 an hour.
In that time the cheap bread went from 50 cents to 3 dollars.
I told my boss I would need a raise years ago when bread went to 85 cents he laughed.
I struggled like fuck as an apprentice then thought I was doing well, now days I couldn't imagine being an apprentice living on your own etc.
A union job or working in a coop is really the way to go even if you struggle along the way. Also I'd kill for 3$ a loaf cheap bread. I live in bumfucksville WI and a cheap loaf is at least 5$ a loaf while the average income is around 40k a year in my county
Oh hey, bumfucksville is right down the way from me! I feel your pain. Everything got wicked expensive super quickly, and wages suuuuuck, especially if you aren’t in/around Madison or Milwaukee. Even kwik trip bread has gotten wildly overpriced. I think that’s currently sitting around $5 for 2 (just a few years ago, used to be $1/2) And their eggs, used to be $0.99/12, now almost $4!! (I haven’t even looked at a regular grocery for those things lately, can’t afford them.)
I’ve started making my own bread. I have a bread machine I got used decades back for $20. It’s not very good bread yet, and I’d probably be better off not baking it in the machine, but it’s nearly free and stupid simple, so whatever. And if I can get my city to permit me for chickens (which they do, thankfully, up to 6, as long as your neighboring houses are either more than 100 feet from the coop, or they agree that it’s fine). Due to a company warehouse sharing my lot lines, I only have one neighbor, and I think it’s maybe more then 100 ft from where the coop will be. I have a (quite large) compost pile that will be included in their run, for them to scratch in and eat bugs, scraps, and mushrooms from (I added some leftover blue oyster spawn to the pile this year to help with the breakdown, since it’s largely sawdust cat litter, and for future chickens to eat), so I think they will end up being great nutrition for fairly limited cost.
Never thought I’d be the type to keep town chickens (we had a dozen growing up in the country, so I know exactly what effort is involved), but with costs being out of control, here we are.
Yeah theres kwik trip around here but I 100% dont shop there since the owners donate to gop candidates and are pro life and dont even sell condoms at their stores. Besides that though I've been making my own bread on and off for about a decade now, flour and yeast is much cheaper and tastier than a manufactured loaf anyway.
One trick I've learned to make a good loaf is the windowpane test which you cant really do with a bread machine. You grab a little chunk of kneaded dough roll it in a circle wait a few mins for it to rise then grab 4 corners and pull it apart. If its translucent and you can see light through it without it tearing it's ready to rise then bake
Yeah fair. I don’t have many options here, unless I want to pay 2-3x as much as a normal grocery (and I think probably zero options that don’t donate to conservative shit, realistically). We only have piggly wiggly locally, and those are so freakin expensive for almost everything (probably because they know they have a truly captive market in the people who can’t go that far, and everyone else is pushed there by sheer distance to the next option - if you run out of sugar, you’ll pay the extra $2 to save an entire hour) The closest real grocery store is 20 min by highway, and it’s also not very good.
I’ll keep that window trick in mind, thanks! Won’t work for baked-in-situ, since that’s all timer based, but I’m thinking that’s the full source of the failures anyway (it rises, but it’s pretty dense and then collapses a bit. My slices no longer look like Batman, but they still fall a half inch or so during baking.. I’ve had to tone down the yeast, which alters the flavor and texture I’m sure)
Anyway, it’s cheap enough that I don’t mind trying a thousand iterations to find the lazy method that works, even if that does include just using the dough setting and transferring to my silicone bread pans. It’s fully edible, great for croutons, it’s just dense and a bit overly sweet most of the time. I wish I had the brain for fully hand-made bread, but I’d never remember to do the next steps on time to have it turn out properly.