Loaf Accounting 101

So, a couple of months ago, I got myself a new bread machine. I wore out my last one, but in my defense, that was thirty years ago—back when shoulder pads were big, hair was bigger, and I could eat half a loaf of bread without my jeans filing a protest.

I decided to return to breadmaking after reading a few labels on store-bought loaves and realizing there seemed to be everything in that bread except, well… bread. If I can’t pronounce it and it glows in the dark, maybe I don’t want it in my sandwich.

The first thing we noticed about homemade bread is that it’s sturdy. Hearty. A single slice of it is the size of a textbook and has the weight of a small child. These days, when I make a sandwich, it technically looks like we’re eating half a sandwich—but our stomachs can testify otherwise.

One thing I’ve discovered is that homemade bread has the shelf life of a soap bubble. Day one: perfect loaf. Day two: suspicious dampness. Day three: mold has claimed it in the name of science. Remember, this is the South, where humidity is both an atmospheric condition and a villain. I even bought a fancy breadbox, but it turns out that a breadbox, southern-style, is just a nice Airbnb for fungi.

To tame the loaf, I bought a bread slicer. “Slicer” may be an optimistic term. It’s a plastic contraption that looks like a rejected prop from a late-night infomercial. It has sides with slots so that you wedge the loaf in, saw away, and hope for something resembling uniform slices. I then freeze the slices individually.

Naturally, I have my eye on an electric slicer now. It’s a good thing this whole operation was about nutrition and not saving money. I’ve done the math: to break even on my equipment, I need to bake approximately 78 more loaves. Seventy-eight.

And so it begins. I have accepted my destiny. I am no longer a casual baker. I am a Bread Baron, a Yeast Whisperer, a Crumb Commander. And when the world falls to chaos, when civilization falters, and people scramble for sustenance…

I’ll be the one on the hill, with 78 loaves and absolutely no regrets.