Rolling in the dough - or maybe not

I bought 50 pounds of bread flour last weekend. Not ten 5-pound bags. I bought one 50-pound bag. The price on bread flour has really gotten to me lately. Buying the 50-pound bag at Costco cost less than half the price at the grocery store. That can really make a difference for us, especially since we go through a bag about every two to three weeks. I use it for weekly pizza night and for dinner rolls and foccacia. You see, I have one of those fancy bread machines. For the past five or six years I've used it as a dough machine. Not any more.

With that big bag of flour staring me down, things had to change. I scoured my pantry and cabinets and unearthed any and every container I could find to fill with flour. I passed some along to my mom. Then my enterprising husband stopped at Menards Home Depot to get me one of those huge plastic paint type buckets. That left me with only about, oh, say ten pounds of bread flour to use. What's a mom to do? And what's a mom who's run out of bread for her kids' lunches to do? Bake!

Before I went to bed Sunday night I read the bread machine manual. Then I poured in the ingredients, pressed all the right buttons and went to bed. Would you believe it that my family was greeted by the smell of fresh baked bread when we woke up the next day? That machine worked! It actually baked a nice loaf of bread.

My kids were thrilled for fresh bread. The first loaf was devoured in a little more than a day. So Tuesday night I repeated the process. Now that loaf is nearly gone. And I've been told by my children that they would prefer I not buy bread at the store any more. They'd just rather have homemade. I can see their point. I'm pretty sure it's costing me less than buying bread at the store too. I'm only wondering why I hadn't done this before.

I still have about 40 pounds of bread flour. At this rate it won't last me nearly so long. But I'll still ask:
anyone have a use for some bread flour? I'm happy to share!

Epilogue: Just learned that a great deal on flour at Jewel (a Chicagoland grocery store) starts tomorrow! Would have been even cheaper. But then again, I wouldn't have bought 50 pounds of it and have all the stories to tell and probably wouldn't be baking nearly as much fresh bread.