The thing is, homemade bread ends up being a lot tastier than store bought if your only store bought options are big mass produced soft breads. The crust especially suffers on packaged breads.

You don't even need fancypants flour. Just an oven and a few minutes to prepare it (plus rise time and bake time of course). I prefer to do a half and half mix of wheat and bread flour, but everybody is free to do what they like.

You can get good bread at bakeries, but I find that they tend to way overcharge for it.

How much can they really charge that makes it worth spending ten minutes kneading, ten minutes washing your hands and the next two days pulling out arm hairs with caked on dough? That's my experience with bread making anyway.

No matter what bread I buy, bread isn't a major part of my weekly budget.

Here's a very simple, no-knead bread recipe that I've enjoyed baking several times. Some people enjoy the kneading process, but if you just want some bread, it is worth making: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread

I have a stand mixer with a dough hook. I've done no hand-kneading and no additional hand-washing with any of my bread baking, and I make about 1.5 loaves per week. Outside of rising and baking time, making a standard loaf takes me all of six minutes.

I've found that a 2 minutes preparation for a bread machine and a 3 minute cleaning is much cheaper than a 15 minutes walk into a bakery.

But then, I just reduce the number of walkings by buying lots of breads every time I go there, and freezing them afterwards. Still less time consuming than using the machine - but the bread tastes worse.

If you're in Canada even all-purpose flour will work OK, since Canadian flour has a higher gluten content.

For most stuff that is very true. There is one bread that keeps me easily saturated on 6 slices for the whole work day (=manageable caloric intake) but I need to make that myself. Takes 10+5min prep/cleanup, no rise time or preheating. Just put in baking pan to the middle of cold oven and take out after 60min at 200°C. Remove from pan and let cool for the night. 300g whole grain spelt flour, 50g rye flour (for more gluten), 10g salt, 20g white wine vinegar, 0.5-1 cube yeast, 300g sunflower seeds. Pro: Good taste, no sugar or additives, easy to control nutritional content, cheap. Con: Doesn't bake itself.

> I appreciate all the do-it-yourself fervor on this thread but baking seems like a decent application of the principle of economic specialization

Not really. The cost for me to bake bread is cheaper [and while I did ask for the guy with 5-min hands on time's recipe largely because bread takes ~15 min of effort with the recipe I use], I can make it and a main course in ~45 min of actual work.

> I, for one, enjoy visiting my local bakery every few days, and they do a better job than I will ever do even if I quit my job and practice baking full-time, which I'm not planning to do.

It takes me ~40 minutes round trip to go to the bakery. Its one of those tasks that, frankly, cost me more time than the 30min I spend baking bread twice a week.

There are fine bread machines. I use one of those and I am very satisfied with the result and the easy and fast usage: http://www.panasonic.com/uk/consumer/home-appliances/breadma...

That only works when the "market" has similar desires as your own. Which might be true in, say, Europe with regard to bread but in the US it's hard to find high quality bread at a typical grocery store. I've been learning how to make bread at home for some years and now I'm pretty good at it. I prefer my bread to anything I can find in a store easily and while it does take time, effort, and the initial expense of buying the necessary equipment, I work full time and making bread isn't a huge time impact on my life.