I AM STILL ALIVE 24.10.2020

ONE SELF PORTRAIT EVERY DAY in 2020 : 298

I have been baking a loaf of sourdough bread pretty much every other day for years now. It’s a family thing, most of us bake our own bread. I don’t especially enjoy doing it but it’s part of my routine. If we lived in France or Italy I most probably wouldn’t bake my own bread but here in London, bread that tastes good is very expensive. of course, taste is subjective and the few times I have bought sliced bread from the corner shop, my kids seem to prefer it.

I am rambling on a bit and I need to speed things up, Inter play Genoa in four minutes’ time and I want to post this before the match.

So, here is what I’m thinking: 2020 will be a year when we haven’t been on holiday at all so I can estimate how many loaves I will have baked this year. let’s say that on average I bake three loaves per week … oh god, it’s just dawned on me that what I am writing is so boring, I’m not sure if to carry on. Match has already started, I’ll conclude. three loaves per week, 52 weeks in the year so by the time 2020 has ended I will have baked 150 loaves. For each loaf I use 500 grams of flour, a pinch of salt and water. I buy the cheapest flour as the sourdough gives most of the flavour. I buy supermarket branded strong white flour and 10kg bags of chapatti flour which is often very cheap, sometimes as low as £3.50 for the bag. I use 2/3 white flour and 1/3 chapatti flour. The cost of the flour per loaf is around 40p and the electricity usage about 20p (I googled). so each loaf costs me 60p, if I had to buy the equivalent bread in a bakery I would probably pay £3.60 per loaf and sliced bread in a supermarket would cost £1.30.

I’m speeding up, the match has already started.

So assuming that if I didn’t bake my own bread I would buy bread that would cost £2 on average, my bread cost per year would be £300 and the estimated yearly cost of me baking my own bread is £90. So I am saving £210 per year by baking my own bread.

Last week we were scammed and we lost £250. So maybe in the future we could be more careful about scammers and buy posh bread from a bakery and be better off.

I AM STILL ALIVE

---