Homemade Versus Store-Bought: Pasta Edition

Recession gardens.  Homemade food.  There is a lot of talk lately that going green is not only healthier and better for the environment, but also budget-friendly.  We're switching to a lot of homemade things in our diet around here, with the goal to eventually have a processed-food free pantry.  I've been making my own cookies for years, but it's time to take things a step further. I made marshmallows. Lately, I've been baking a lot of bread.  We've also started making our own pasta, and boy is it delicious!

We use American's Test Kitchen's recipe, which calls for 3 eggs and 2 cups of flour. You pulse the flour in a food processor and then add the eggs.  If the dough doesn't form a ball, you add a teaspoon of ice water at a time.  If it's too sticky, you add in a bit more flour. Then you let it sit for fifteen minutes before rolling it into sheets and then through the pasta cutter.  It doesn't get much easier than that.  Fresh pasta only needs to cook for about 3 minutes. We usually put the water on as soon as we start rolling the dough, and by the time the pasta is ready to go in the water, it's boiling. Pretty quick procedure. Takes maybe 3o minutes total. You can make a simple sauce while the pasta is resting. Take that, Rachel Ray!

So is it more budget friendly?

Let's compare to Safeway.

 1 lb. Safeway brand spaghetti: $1.25

We'll keep shopping at Safeway for our other ingredients, to keep things consistent.

Eggs: $1.99 per dozen

Flour:  $2.00 for 5 lbs. all-purpose flour

I think it's clear who is going to win this, but let's finish making our calculations, shall we?

Eggs come out to a total of about $0.50.  (1.99/12x3)

Flour comes out to about $0.40.  (2.00/1o cups x 2)

$0.90 for homemade spaghetti versus $1.25 for store brand spaghetti. Homemade wins!