If you think that then it sucks to be you. Good bread is a joy.

Eat better bread. Seriously. There is a reason it used to eaten a lot more than it is now, and that’s because by and large it’s badly made now. Well made bread with proper incredients is fantastic. Methods such as the Chorleywood process have removed most of the good and all the taste. Bread requires flour, water and salt. Be sceptical is there is much more than that. Crust is better with a little added sugar or honey and a little fat helps texture and flavour. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process

Or, you know, the key ingredient in a class of highly popular and convenient foods called sandwiches.

No misinterpretation needed.

Bread is not a filler. Some people (most?) eat it because they enjoy it. They actively seek it even when "better" options are available.

tl;dr Paleo diet.

I make good bread a couple times a week, for maybe fifty cents a loaf.

Let's assume the loaf is 1 pound (likely slightly more). You claim $0.50 ingredients in that 1 lb. Cheap flour is what, I see $0.02/oz at walmart (25lb bulk), so that's $0.32 per loaf, max. You've added 18 cents of other ingredients. (Edit: factoring in water, more like $0.15-0.20 of flour, so 30-35 cents for healthy additives). You can't buy much with 35 cents. The bread is still a bunch of empty carbs combined with some healthy food (baked, so a bunch of the nutrients are reduced. You can make more expensive bread that's 1 or 5 dollars too, it doesn't change the fact that bread is mostly empty carbs, plus whatever you added that you could have eaten separately and gotten more nutrients from.

Great bread doesn't have to be expensive and it doesn't need anything extra. And "healthy additives" doesn't make bad bread good.

There's also really nothing wrong with calories. Most people need something like 2000 a day, leaves plenty of room for eating things just for taste.