Thursday, February 16, 2012

Make It Or Buy It? English Muffin Bread


English Muffin Bread is something our family really enjoys...but it's so expensive to purchase at the grocery store!  (For example, Family Fare has it on sale this week for $2.99 per loaf.)  That's why I was excited to find a simple, easy recipe for English Muffin Bread on one of my favorite websites, Simple Organized Living(Please note, the link to the recipe will take you to a recipe for Ham, Egg, and Cheese Sandwiches on English Muffin Bread...so the bread recipe is in the middle of the sandwich recipe somewhere.)  Andrea of Simple Organized Living is a local blogger who posts great recipes, in addition to her many informative posts on organizing, time management, and much more. 

I made the bread for the first time earlier this week...and it was super easy, as well as delicious!  We like the bread toasted, with the same kind of toppings you'd put on an English Muffin...peanut butter and jelly, or butter and cheese. 

After baking the bread, I followed Andrea's hints and waited until the loaves were completely cool, and then sliced them thinly. I froze one of the sliced loaves, and we proceeded to devour the other loaf! I've also taken frozen slices out of the freezer and put them directly in the toaster (as suggested by Andrea), and that worked great. 

So, Make It Or Buy It? 
  • The recipe is not time-consuming or complicated...it took me less than 10 minutes to throw the ingredients together, and then I just had to wait for the bread to rise before baking it.
  • The recipe calls for basic, normal ingredients...nothing weird or unusual!
  • You don't even need a bread machine to make this!
  • The ingredients I used set me back approximately $1.86**...to make TWO LOAVES. 
  • The taste and consistency is really similar to (and maybe even better than) the bread you can buy in the Meijer or Family Fare bakery. 
So...my vote is MAKE IT!

**I figured out the cost of the recipe using regular-priced ingredients purchased from Meijer. So, if you are able to get some of these basic ingredients on sale, you'll be able to make the bread even cheaper.  Also, I recently discovered that Costco's price on yeast is much better than Meijer's price!  If you figure the Costco yeast price into this recipe, you'll be able to make two loaves for only 99 cents total!

Oh and by the way, flour is on sale at Meijer this week...and this recipes calls for a total of 5 1/2 cups.

Enjoy the bread...and the savings!

9 comments:

  1. Lisa - do you use regular flour for this or bread flour?

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  2. Just all-purpose flour...that helps keep it inexpensive and also gives you the good chewy texture, similar to an English Muffin.

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  3. Made it today, so EASY, made grilled ham and cheese with it. We loved it.

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  4. I making this for supper tonight. Going to try it with Roast Beef that is in the crock pot. :-) Thanks Lisa!

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    1. Hope you like it! It is pretty good fresh out of the oven, but since it is quite chewy, we like it best toasted (or grilled!). Let me know how it turns out for you :)

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    2. We loved it with the Roast beef. Josh kind of dipped in the gravy and it tasted great!

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  5. Really liked it and was easy to make! We like it toasted with honey on it. Next time I am going to add some raisins and cinnamon and see how that works.

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  6. I can't wait to try this! Especially with the egg sandwich :)

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  7. Just made this today and we love it! I can't believe how easy it was to make! We made it for the Island Chicken Sandwiches which was good but now I've ate two more pieces with honey on it before bed :) Yum Yum!

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