I love baking bread!  I love the smell of fresh ground wheat and other grains.  Homemade bread so far superior to any bread that can be bought, and it really isn’t that hard, nor does it take a lot of time.  Many people argue that it’s not worth their time to make bread, but I simply cannot justify purchasing it.  My family does not feel satisfied with store-bought bread, and we can go through an awful lot of it in short order.  Besides, with prices around $2 per loaf, or higher, I just plain cannot afford to buy as much as we could use.  So I bake bread.
                      
I figure it costs around 25 cents per loaf for the ingredients.  I bake four loaves at a time, and sometimes eight, but if figured at four loaves, and it takes me 15 minutes to get it mixed and in the pans, then I am, in essence, getting four loaves for a dollar, and saving around $7.  (It takes around 20-30 minutes if hand kneaded.)  Since it took only 15 minutes, it could be said that I am making about $28 per hour to make that bread.  And since it is more filling, the bread will go farther, and my family will be healthier.

Why is whole wheat better?  There are so many reasons that whole books could be written about that subject.  The easiest way to explain it, though is that milling grain into white flour and then enriching it is like taking a dollar from someone and then giving about 5 cents back to them.  Most of the nutrients are in the wheat germ, which is a wonderful source of vitamins and fiber.  The germ has vitamin E, and the bran has the fiber.